Obama Warned Trump About Flynn

President Donald Trump is calling investigations into his campaign's possible ties to Russia's election meddling a "taxpayer funded charade" and a "total hoax".

Trump is weighing in on Twitter following a congressional hearing on Russian interference.

Yates was sacked by President Donald Trump after 10 days as acting attorney general when she declined to enforce his executive order on travel and immigration.

Yates said she felt it was critical to get the information to the White House "in part because the vice president was unknowingly making false statements to the public", and also because Flynn was compromised, given that the Russians knew he was misleading other officials. He built a close relationship past year with then-candidate Trump and became a frequent Trump campaign surrogate before assuming a brief tenure as national security advisor. Pence vouched for Flynn in television interviews, using information he's said came from the national security adviser.

Trump has repeatedly branded the issue of Russian interference "fake news" despite the USA intelligence community's conclusion that President Vladimir Putin himself was behind the meddling.

Instead, Trump chose to play up former director of national intelligence James Clapper's acknowledgement during the same hearing that he was not aware of any evidence of collusion between the president and Russian Federation, which American intelligence has concluded tried to sway the U.S. election in Trump's favor.

"Not only her refusal to defend the president's immigration executive order, but her odd behavior with respect to the [Mike] Flynn matter".

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, emerged in 2015 as a strident critic of the Obama administration, which fired him.

The Trump White House on Monday confirmed that Obama raised concerns about Flynn in the November meeting.

Flynn became Trump's first appointment as his national security adviser, a key position in the White House overseeing the administration's foreign and defence policies. So when the F.B.I. began examining possible connections between Trump associates and Russian Federation this past summer, it appeared to have told nearly no one - not even Mr. Clapper, who was then overseeing the bureau as the director of national intelligence. McGahn asked Yates how Flynn did in the interview, she testified, "and I declined to give him an answer to that". Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who led the transition in the days after the election, wanted Flynn to be slotted as director of national intelligence, a Cabinet-level job but one with narrower responsibilities.

White House officials had insisted that Flynn had not discussed USA -imposed sanctions with Kislyak during the presidential transition period, but asked Flynn to resign after news reports indicated he had lied about the nature of the calls.

Here's a timeline of Yates and McGahn's meetings and what they discussed, acco. If Flynn lied to his bosses, and Russian officials knew it, Moscow could use it as leverage against him.

In October, Washington formally accused Moscow of a campaign of cyber operations against American political organizations ahead of the presidential election.

Among the first set of advices President-elect Donald Trump received from Barack Obama was to not appoint Gen (retd) Michael Flynn, according to aides of the former president, but Trump chose to ignore it.

During that section of the hearing, Clapper described as accurate a report in the Guardian newspaper that British intelligence officials became aware in late 2015 about suspicious interactions between Trump advisers and Russian agents, and that the information was passed on to US intelligence agencies.

"This is someone who ultimately didn't even want to enforce it", White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said. One of Flynn's calls with Kislyak came on December 29, the day Obama leveled sanctions on Russian Federation in retaliation for the election hacking.

Obama had cautioned against Flynn, whom he fired in 2014 as head of the defense intelligence agency, due to his poor record in administration and personnel management.