- New nursing home rules threaten rural communities (4/23/24)
- Human wages, robot purchases in lock-step (4/11/24)
- Heed the call for caution this year in road work zones (4/9/24)
- This year, heed the call for caution in highway work zones (4/9/24)
- Railroad safety should not be left to contract negotiations (4/5/24)
- Rejecting LB764 upholds fairness in Nebraska (4/4/24)
- A wake-up call for young adults: Get your cancer checkups (4/2/24)
Editorial
Let's see transcripts of all calls to, from Russian ambassador
Thursday, February 16, 2017
On the surface, national security adviser Michael T. Flynn's resignation seems cut-and-dried.
In the cold war years, any hint of collusion with Russia, then the Soviet Union, would have resulted in the immediate death of an American political career, if not a prison sentence or worse.
Not only did Flynn spend time on the phone with the Russian ambassador before President Trump took office, offering assurances any sanctions would be lifted later, he lied about it to Vice President Mike Pence, who then went on to vouch for him.
Flynn's downfall began when Russia failed to respond to President Obama's sanctions in response to Russia's interference in the U.S. election.
That raised red flags in the intelligence community, and Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and Obama officials warned the Trump team that Flynn had misled Spicer and Pence.
The FBI questioned Flynn shortly after Trump's inauguration, and Trump fired Yates at the end of January after she refused to defend his temporary travel ban.
Flynn apologized to Pence on Monday, saying he had given him "incomplete information," but it was too late, and Flynn was fired Tuesday.
Flynn should not have been surprised that his conversations with the Russian ambassador were being monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies, but that raises the question: What other conversations were intercepted?
President Trump has few friends in the federal bureaucracy, regardless of their political allegiance.
It would be extremely enlightening to see whether any of those calls were to or from Democratic political operatives, and who decided to release the ones that were revealed.