Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn in Oval Office meeting
Flynn was previously fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
— -- 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 on Monday morning, just hours after Trump utilized Twitter to cast blame on the Obama administration for giving Flynn his security clearance.
Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper fired Flynn as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. Clapper is scheduled to testify alongside former acting Attorney General Sally Yates before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism this afternoon about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and Flynn is expected to be a major topic of discussion.
Before Trump fired Yates for issuing instructions to the Justice Department against defending 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.
At Monday afternoon's White House press briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump didn't disclose the specific details of his meeting with Obama, but Spicer said the reports were no surprise because "President Obama made it known that he wasn't exactly a fan of General Flynn's."
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