Official White House Photo by Pete Souza(WASHINGTON) — President Barack Obama warned then President-elect Donald Trump not to hire retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as his national security adviser during their 90-minute Oval Office meeting last November, two former Obama administration officials confirmed to ABC News.
The warning was first reported by NBC News Monday morning just hours after Trump utilized Twitter to cast blame upon the Obama administration for giving Flynn his security clearance.
Flynn was fired from his post as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Obama’s director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in 2014. Clapper is scheduled to testify alongside former acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday afternoon about Russian meddling in the election, where Flynn is expected to be a major topic of discussion.
Before Yates was fired by Trump for issuing instructions to the Justice Department against his first travel ban executive order, she warned White House officials that Flynn may have misled members of the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, about the nature his conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.
The White House has yet to respond to a request for comment.
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