Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn quits amid Russia contacts

WASHINGTON: Michael Flynn resigned his post as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, a senior administration official said, news that came after the Justice Department had warned the White House of its concerns over Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US.

This official, meanwhile, rejected reports that retired General David Petraeus was being considered for Flynn’s job. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal personnel matters.

The White House had said earlier Monday that Trump is still “evaluating” Flynn’s actions amid questions over whether he misled Vice President Mike Pence about whether he discussed sanctions with Russia’s envoy to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Pence told a TV interviewer that Flynn didn’t discuss the sanctions but now says he was basing that assertion solely on Flynn’s word.

The administration official said the White House has been reviewing Flynn’s actions for several weeks in light of the Justice Department’s warning.

The Justice Department actions were reported earlier by the Washington Post, which says former acting attorney general Sally Yates and other officials warned the Trump administration that Flynn had misled them about his contacts with the Russian and might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

Trump fired Yates after she said she could not enforce his executive order limiting immigration from seven majority-Muslim nations because she didn’t consider it a lawful order. Flynn’s ouster for having contacts with the ambassador is a sign of US “paranoia” and shows that the Trump administration either isn’t independent or suffers from “Russophobia”, Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote on Tuesday on Facebook.

Hawks in the US treated readiness for dialog with Russia as an Orwellian “thought crime,” he said.