‘It would have been impossible for me to know this’Mr. Trump was warned just after the election and in the first days of his presidency that keeping on Mr. Flynn, who was a campaign adviser, could be troublesome. And during the transition, Mr. Flynn told a top Trump aide that he was under federal investigation. He was first warned about Mr. Flynn two days after the election, when Mr. Trump met in the Oval Office with President Barack Obama, who cautioned his successor not to give Mr. Flynn a senior post on his national security team. (Mr. Obama had fired Mr. Flynn in 2014 as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency after repeated clashes over his management.) never disclosed to him during the campaign that some of the people closest to him were under investigation for their ties to Russia.

Source: New York Times May 17, 2019 20:15 UTC