Rachel Maddow: How Could Pence Lead The Transition And Not Know Flynn Had Been Compromised?


While the Trump administration tries to downplay Monday’s testimony from former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates as “old news,” several things Yates said gave us further insight into how the so-called head of state dithered for days after he was told that former National Security Adviser was working as a paid foreign agent. And perhaps more damning, Yates also helped prove that pretend Christian VP Mike Pence is almost as big of a liar as his boss.

On her show Monday evening, Rachel Maddow began connecting the dots regarding Pence and the Flynn affair:

“Vice President Mike Pence, he was the head of the transition when the transition was notified multiple times, including in person twice by Flynn’s lawyers, and in writing by Congress, that Mike Flynn had taken foreign payments. 

“Foreign payments were also the subject of multiple contemporaneous press reports. NBC News reports that the Trump transition had direct knowledge of Mike Flynn’s payments from foreign sources, but nevertheless, Vice President Mike Pence, head of the transition, he proclaims he was perfectly ignorant of that fact until weeks after Mike Flynn was fired.”

The Trump team has long maintained that Flynn was let go because he lied to Pence about whether or not he had ever met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But as Maddow noted, that explanation doesn’t make a bit of logical sense:

“Whether or not you care about what the vice president knew about Mike Flynn, whether you care about that subject itself or not, the bigger question is why are they telling this lie about it?. Why are they lying about this stuff? They are telling stories about Mike Flynn that make no sense given we now know about the facts.”

So, Maddow concluded, what Sally Yates said Monday shows us yet again that the administration has been and continues to lie when it comes to the matter of Michael Flynn:

“It is not good for the White House that they cannot come up with a story about Mike Flynn that has the benefit of being true. That was a problem for them before (Monday), it became a much bigger problem for them after (Monday’s hearing). Before (Monday), we knew that he had inexplicably waited 18 days after being warned about Mike Flynn before they fired him. (Monday), that delay became all the more inexplicable and even a little bit scary.”

Featured Image Via YouTube