Barack Obama Warned Donald Trump: Do Not Hire Michael Flynn

Former President Barack Obama warned Donald Trump not to hire Michael Flynn has his National Security Advisor, reports Obama administration officials.

According to NBC News, when Mr. Trump was just a president-elect, he sat down with then-President Barack Obama. During their conversation, Mr. Obama warned Mr. Trump not to hire Flynn, whom he himself fired in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency because of his temperamental issues.

“Given the importance of the job, the President through [sic] there were better people for it, and that Flynn wasn’t up for the job,” a former senior Obama administration official told CNN Monday.

Similar to this former senior official, other former Obama officials also disclosed that then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did not think very highly of Michael Flynn. In fact, he was the one who recommended Flynn’s firing from his post in 2014.

On Monday, press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed that former President Obama made it clear that “he wasn’t exactly a fan of General Flynn’s.” Sean Spicer added that if Barack Obama’s administration was truly concerned about Michael Flynn, then they could have suspended his security clearance.

The recent revelations came on the same day that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified about the events that led to Michael Flynn’s firing from his position of National Security Advisor.

“We were concerned that the American people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what General Flynn had done,” Yates said.

Yates declined to go into specific details, which she did mention were classified, but she confirmed what led up to the firing of Michael Flynn in February. According to Yates, Flynn misled officials and media outlets like NBC News by stating that he did not discuss Barack Obama administration sanctions on Russia when in fact he had.

During the ongoing investigation in February, the Washington Post reported that Sally Yates had warned the Trump White House in late January that Flynn had not been truthful about his contacts with Russia and that he was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence.

“To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians,” Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

Michael Flynn And His Connections With Russia

On November 18, 2016, Michael Flynn accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to the position of National Security Advisor. Even prior to his appointment, he had already drawn criticism from major media outlets for his close relations with the Russian government.

According to the New York Times, on December 29, 2016, Michael Flynn spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. On the same day, Barack Obama’s administration announced through a statement that they are going to take retaliatory measures in response to the interference in the 2016 presidential campaign by the Kremlin.

Just after a month, WSJ reported that Flynn was under investigation by the United States counterintelligence agents for his communications with Russian officials. After enough evidence was released by U.S. intelligence officials, Flynn’s spokesman released a statement that Flynn “indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

Following the events that led to his resignation in February, Sean Spicer stated the following.

“We got to a point not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue, where a level of trust between the President and General Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change… The issue here was that the President got to the point where General Flynn’s relationship – misleading the Vice President and others, or the possibility that he had forgotten critical details of this important conversation had created a critical mass and an unsustainable situation. That’s why the President decided to ask for his resignation, and he got it.”

Michael Flynn Will Lead To Donald Trump Impeachment?

According to PoliticusUSA, Donald Trump moves closer to his impeachment because of Flynn, as he himself is ultimately responsible for Flynn’s potential crimes when he served as National Security Adviser.

[Featured Image by Saul Loeb/Pool/Getty Images]