President Donald Trump has responded to a guilty plea by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying Flynn\u2019s actions as a member of his transition team \u201cwere lawful\u201d.
\nFlynn has entered a plea deal and agreed to co-operate with an inquiry into alleged collusion with Russia.
\nThe deal, for a lesser charge than he might have faced, prompted speculation that he has incriminating evidence.
\nThe president wrote on Twitter on Saturday that he had \u201cnothing to hide\u201d.
\nFlynn is co-operating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading an investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia ahead of the 2016 election.
\nOn Saturday, a day after Flynn\u2019s indictment, it emerged that a veteran Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agent had been dismissed from Mueller\u2019s team after the discovery that he had sent anti-Trump text messages.
\nPeter Strzok was removed from the investigation in summer, a spokesman for the special counsel\u2019s office told the New York Times.
\nSaturday was a momentous day for Trump, after his sweeping tax reform bill finally scraped through the senate in the early hours of the morning with 51 votes to 49.
\nBut, as he left the White House hours after the vote, he was quick to address Flynn\u2019s admission the day before of lying to the FBI.
\n\u201cWhat has been shown is no collusion, no collusion. There has been absolutely no collusion. So we\u2019re very happy,\u201d he told reporters.
\nIn denying that Flynn had acted unlawfully as part of his transition team, Trump appeared in his tweet to admit that he knew the former general had lied to the FBI before he fired him in February \u2013 contradicting the president\u2019s account at the time.
\nAnalysts say if Trump knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI, at a time he appeared to pressure then-FBI director James Comey to drop the agency\u2019s investigation into the former general, it could amount to obstruction of justice by the president.
\nMatthew Miller, a former Obama administration Justice Department official said in a tweet: \u201cOh my god, he just admitted to obstruction of justice. If Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to let it go, then there is your case.\u201d
\nSources close to the president told the Washington Post that the tweet had been drafted by Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, John Dowd, who later apologised and said he should have been more careful with his language. The White House has yet to comment.
\nMeanwhile, the New York Times reported that it had obtained internal emails sent by Trump\u2019s transition team that disputed the White House assertion that Flynn acted alone in his contacts with Russian officials.
\nIn one email quoted by the paper, a senior adviser appeared to say that Russia had \u201cjust thrown the U.S.A. election to him\u201d, referring to Trump.
\nA White House lawyer told the paper that the adviser, KT McFarland, had meant only that the Democrats were portraying it that way. \u2014 BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump has responded to a guilty plea by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying Flynn\u2019s actions as a member of his transition team \u201cwere lawful\u201d. Flynn has entered a plea deal and agreed to co-operate with an inquiry into alleged collusion with Russia. The deal, for a lesser charge than he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57089,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57087\/revisions\/57089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}