This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/03/donald-trump-michael-flynn-russia-investigation-abc-news-ross

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Trump’s tweets about Flynn could show he obstructed justice, say analysts Trump's Flynn tweets point to obstruction of justice, say opponents
(about 5 hours later)
Donald Trump seized on ABC News’ suspension of a reporter over an erroneous report about Michael Flynn, tweeting his “congratulations” as he continued to rail against the special counsel’s investigation into meddling in the US election, which he called “the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt”. Donald Trump is increasingly vulnerable to charges of obstructing justice and may have inadvertently confessed following the prosecution of his former senior aide Michael Flynn, according to legal experts and senior Democrats.
As the president did so, analysts pointed out that by tweeting about Flynn, he could have placed himself in legal jeopardy. The US president said in a tweet on Saturday that he fired Flynn as national security adviser in February “because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI” about his discussions with Russia’s ambassador to the US last December. Flynn pleaded guilty in court on Friday to lying to FBI agents.
Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about conversations with Russian officials. He also announced his co-operation with Robert Mueller’s investigation. This would mean that Trump knew Flynn had committed a serious crime when, according to the former FBI director James Comey, the president asked Comey the next day to halt an FBI investigation into Flynn. On Sunday Trump, who later fired Comey, again denied making such a request.
Experts told the Guardian the wording of his plea agreement may indicate that Flynn has already worn a wire or recorded conversations with others under investigation. Multiple legal analysts and critics of the president said Trump’s remark was the clearest indication so far that he has tried to obstruct the various inquiries into possible collusion between Moscow and his presidential campaign, leaving him vulnerable to criminal charges.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI”. Trump had not previously said Flynn lost his job because of an actual criminal matter, such as lying to the FBI, rather than the political error of lying to vice-president Mike Pence, which was cited at the time. “He could be tweeting himself into an obstruction of justice conviction,” said Richard Painter, a former ethics counsel to the George W Bush administration.
Analysts were quick to point out that if Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI, his asking then FBI director James Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn would constitute obstruction of justice, one of the issues Mueller is examining. Trump later fired Comey. “That’s a confession of deliberate, corrupt obstruction of justice,” said Laurence Tribe, a professor in constitutional law at Harvard University.
Speaking under oath in Congress in June, Comey said he believed Trump directed him to drop the Flynn investigation. Moving to limit the potential damage, one of Trump’s attorneys, John Dowd, claimed he had written the tweet, which he described as “sloppy”.
On Sunday morning, Trump wrote: “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Dianne Feinstein of California, the most senior Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, which is conducting its own Trump-Russia inquiry, said on Sunday that “what we’re beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice” against the president.
ABC News’ error came on Friday, when chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross cited an unnamed confidant of Flynn in reporting that Trump had directed Flynn to make contact with Russians while he was a candidate in last year’s presidential election. He could be tweeting himself into an obstruction of justice conviction
Hours later, Ross clarified his report on ABC’s evening news, saying his source now said Trump had done so as president-elect, asking Flynn to contact the Russians about issues including working together to fight Islamic State. ABC issued a correction. “I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation,” Feinstein told NBC’s Meet the Press. “That’s obstruction of justice.”
“We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday,” the network said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the report was not “fully vetted through our editorial standards process”. The latest frenzy of activity from the White House followed Flynn’s guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with a sprawling criminal investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, who has already indicted two other Trump campaign officials for alleged crimes and accepted a guilty plea from a third.
“It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience,” the statement said. Mueller’s decision to agree a deal with Flynn indicates that the former national security adviser holds evidence that could help Mueller prosecute even more senior figures for even more serious crimes, according to legal analysts.
Trump tweeted: “Congratulations to ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and ‘papers’ should do the same with their Fake News!” Experts told the Guardian the wording of Flynn’s plea agreement also left open the possibility that Flynn had already worn a wire or otherwise recorded conversations with other associates of Trump who are under investigation.
On Sunday morning he sought to up the ante, writing: A central unanswered question is why Flynn lied to the FBI if there was not more serious wrongdoing that he was trying to cover up. “It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful,” Trump said in his tweet on Saturday. “There was nothing to hide!”
People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars! Flynn falsely denied to FBI agents that he had urged Russia’s ambassador to refrain from retaliating against sanctions on Moscow imposed by Barack Obama on 29 December, in response to Russian meddling in the election. While it is technically illegal for a private citizen to negotiate with a foreign government in dispute with the US, no one has ever been convicted of breaking that 218-year-old law.
The Dow Jones industrial average did fall by more 350 points after the ABC report, although it had largely recovered by the end of the day. Documents released by Mueller on Friday said Flynn was being directed around that time by a “very senior” member of Trump’s transition team. Multiple US news outlets reported that this was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
Ross, 69, tweeted: “My job is to hold people accountable and that’s why I agree with being held accountable myself.” Among issues being examined by investigators is whether any agreement existed between Russia and Trump – or senior Trump advisers – that Trump’s administration would act favourably towards the Kremlin in return for Russian assistance in the election campaign. US intelligence agencies concluded that Moscow mounted an influence campaign aimed at helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school based in Florida, told the Associated Press that in Trump’s America, errors like that made by Ross could have serious consequences. The New York Times on Saturday published details of emails from transition team members. One national security adviser, KT McFarland, wrote that Obama’s sanctions would complicate Trump’s relations with a country “which has just thrown the USA election to him”. The Times said a White House lawyer told it McFarland had been referring to how Democrats portrayed the election result.
“When the president of the United States refers to the press collectively as an enemy of the people, the people who support that view will interpret certain acts of journalism as being evidence that the president is correct,” he said. Other comments made by Trump could also put him in jeopardy of obstruction charges. Several Republican senators have said Trump asked them to stop congressional inquiries into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
“When there is a clear mistake, it can be translated by folks who are attacking the press as bias. I think it’s very important for journalists in this political culture to be more aggressive, and more cautious at the same time.” And after stating publicly that he had fired Comey for other reasons, Trump privately cited Comey’s pursuit of the Russia investigation as the reason, according to a leaked White House transcript.
Trump’s tweet about ABC came shortly after two complaints about the FBI and justice department’s treatment of Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016, over her use of a private email server while secretary of state. “I faced great pressure because of Russia,” Trump said. “Now, that’s taken off.”
Early on Sunday morning he returned to the subject, tweeting about a New York Times report on Saturday which said Mueller had removed an FBI agent from his team this summer, after the discovery of text messages critical of Trump. He also returned to an old complaint about a donation to an FBI deputy director by a Clinton ally. On Sunday Mike Rogers, a Republican former Michigan congressman who served on Trump’s transition team, said Trump’s actions around the firings of Flynn and Comey were likely to be central to the outcome of the Russia inquiry.
The president added: “After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.” “I do believe James Comey,” Rogers said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think James Comey is a very good man. I think his testimony is going to be credible.”
In a series of increasingly wild tweets on Sunday, Trump attacked the FBI and ABC News, which suspended veteran journalist Brian Ross for an error in his reporting on the prosecution of Flynn on Friday.
The president also seized on reports that Mueller fired an FBI agent from his team for having sent text messages critical of Trump during the election campaign.
“After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,” Trump said in one tweet.