OK FRIENDS, I HAVE TO RETRACT THIS STORY!
As pointed out by txdoubledd below, the actual text of the Woodward book makes clear that the meeting between Pence, Priebus and McGahn in the Situation Room was AFTER Pence supposedly learned of Flynn’s deceit from the upcoming Washington Post story. So this would put the meeting two weeks later sometime on or after February 9 and would make Woodward’s account consistent with the McGahn Timeline.
My misunderstanding derived from the condensed synopsis presented on the Rachel Maddow Show which lead to the impression that the meeting happened in response to the Yates January 26 briefing to McGahn or shorty thereafter. But clearly this is not what Woodward wrote. From this USA Today article:
- After The Washington Post reported in February 2017 that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had discussed sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador – contrary to what Flynn had told Pence – the vice president joined White House Counsel Donald McGahn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in the Situation Room to review FBI transcripts of Flynn's communications. But the book doesn't say how Pence reacted to that revelation.
Still Priebus is involved from January 26 on. According to this article by Murray Waas:
Later that same day [January 26], McGahn briefed the president about what he had learned from Yates, according to confidential White House records and interviews. McGahn apparently made no contemporaneous notes of what he told the president.Reince Priebus was also present for this briefing, according to the same records.
Further:
A person with first-hand knowledge told me that during interviews with the special counsel, both McGahn and Priebus confirmed that they had informed Trump during this meeting that Flynn was being investigated by the FBI.
Pribus learned on January 26th. Yet, according to the McGahn Timeline nobody told Pence for two more weeks, and he learned about it from the media. I still don’t think this is believable, but my story is incorrect in stating that Woodward’s account reveals that Pence was lying.
So, I guess those two weeks are still a mystery.
Here is my original incorrect article. Apologies!
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Tonight Rachel Maddow quoted a section about the Flynn firing timeline from Bob Woodward’s just released book ‘Fear’ Chapter 10. Woodward asserts that this sequence of events suggests Trump knew about assurances that Flynn made to Kislyak regarding sanctions and subsequently lied about to the FBI. Indeed, this is newsworthy, however what is categorically revealed here is that Vice President Pence lied about when he learned that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
The purported reason that Flynn was fired was that he had lied to Pence about not discussing sanctions. These denials had supposedly resulted in Pence backing up Flynn’s story. Here is the current publicly accepted timeline with my emphasis:
Jan. 12, 2017: The Washington Post reports Flynn and Kislyak spoke several times as the sanctions announcement was unfolding.
Jan. 15, 2017: Pence discusses the calls between Flynn and Kislyak on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” saying “they did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.”
Jan. 24, 2017: Flynn denies to FBI agents that he discussed the sanctions with Russian officials.
Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates tells the White House counsel that Pence, and other top officials, made statements about Flynn’s actions that were not true.
Feb. 9, 2017: Pence learns about Yates’ warning, according to NBC News. The Washington Post reports Flynn discussed sanctions with Kislyak.
Feb. 13, 2017: Flynn resigns, saying he had he had “inadvertently briefed the vice president-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador.”
Feb. 14, 2017: Pence spokesman Marc Lotter said the vice president “became aware of incomplete information that he had received Feb. 9, last Thursday night, based on media accounts. He did an inquiry based on those media accounts.”
Note, on February 14th, one day after Flynn resigns, Pence’s spokesperson says Pence only learned about Yate’s warning and Flynn’s discussions about sanctions four days earlier on February 9 from the media. This is still their assertion.
Here is the Woodward transcript from today’s Rachael Maddow Show:
...On January 26, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates had come to the White House. She told White House Counsel Donald McGahn that intercepts showed that Flynn had not been truthful about contacts with Russians and was worried that Flynn could be a blackmail target.
Flynn had denied discussing the sanctions 10 times, Priebus calculated… Priebus tracked down White House Counsel McGahn… Priebus asked him if they could get the transcripts of the conversations that Flynn had with the Russian Ambassador.
Yes, McGahn said, of course. Soon he had the highly classified transcripts of three communications between Flynn and Kislyak that the FBI had intercepted during the routine monitoring of the Russian Ambassador.
McGahn and Pribus were joined by Vice President Pence in the Situation Room to review the transcripts. Pence had backed Flynn’s denial publicly.
In all three transcripts, Flynn and the ambassador discussed the sanctions. In the last call, initiated by Kislyak, the ambassador thanked Flynn for his advice on the sanctions and said the Russians would follow it.
That nailed the story and it explained Putin’s curiously passive response to the sanctions. Normally the Russian president would be expected to retaliate expelling some Americans from Russia. But the day after Obama announced the sanctions, Putin announced he would not.
President-elect Trump praised Putin, tweeting “Great move on delay (by V. Putin)-I always knew he was very smart!”
The sequence suggested that Trump might have known of Flynn’s role. But it was unclear what Flynn said to the president about his conversations with Kislyak.
By Woodward’s reporting, Pence knew about Flynn’s discussions regarding sanctions with Kislyak long before February 9th, and he did not learn about these discussions from the media. He actually read the transcripts in the situation room with McGahn and Priebus weeks earlier.
One of the things that has never added up about the Flynn/Kislyak matter is Pence’s role. Pence was in charge of the transition. He would be expected to know what Flynn was saying to the Russians. Now we discover that for at least two weeks Pence sat on the information after reading the intercept transcripts, and only went public with a false story about learning it from the media, when he found out that the story was about to be reported:
The White House kept Vice President Mike Pence in the dark for weeks about the warning it had gotten about national security adviser Michael Flynn from the Justice Department, Pence's press secretary said Tuesday.
Pence did not find out until Feb. 9, according to Marc Lotter. Trump was first informed about the Justice Department's concerns regarding Flynn on Jan. 26, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at Tuesday's daily press briefing.
...
The date the vice president knew is significant because it is when the administration became aware that the Washington Post was about to publish a heavily-sourced story that confirmed Flynn and the Russian ambassador discussed sanctions, despite public denials from Flynn and other incoming senior administration officials including Pence, then the vice president-elect.
So, perhaps Mike Pence first learned that Flynn talked with Kislyak about sanctions when he read the transcripts in the situation room on or about January 26. Or maybe he had prior knowledge from the transition of Flynn’s conversations about sanctions, lied on ‘Face The Nation’, and in the situation room with McGahn and Priebus is just when he first learned about the FBI intercepts. In any case, it was not February 9th and he did not learn about it from the media.
Must have been an interesting two weeks.