CONGRESS/MICHAEL FLYNN/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Trump suggested on Twitter on Friday [5-17-19] that he would have fired Michael T. Flynn as an adviser sooner had he known Mr. Flynn was under federal investigation. The tweet came a day after a few new details about Mr. Flynn’s cooperation with prosecutors emerged in newly unsealed portions of court documents. The court papers noted that some of Mr. Trump’s advisers tried to influence Mr. Flynn’s cooperation, which has long been known; but they revealed that at least one unnamed person with ties to Congress did the same. Mr. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, becoming the first senior White House official to strike a plea deal with prosecutors. Mr. Trump’s assertion belies many of the facts that have emerged about Mr. Flynn’s entanglements with Russia and with investigators. Here is a breakdown of his tweet and what the facts show. Mr. Trump was warned just after the election and in the first days of his presidency that keeping on Mr. Flynn, who was a campaign adviser, could be troublesome. And during the transition, Mr. Flynn told a top Trump aide that he was under federal investigation.”
–Eileen Sullivan, “What Trump Got Wrong on the Investigations Into Michael Flynn,” The New York Times online, May 17, 2019