It's been reported that trump knew about advisor Michael Flynn's deception since late last month. Many of the questions lingering since he resigned on Monday, February 13 are related to why did it took President Trump so long to “force” him to resign?

Flynn continued to stay on as a national security advisor for Trump the entire time that he knew about the deception but when Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the issue the following day, he said that they had already been reviewing it for weeks since they had learned about it.

Getting the Flynn story straight

A more indirect question about Michael Flynn is if President Trump actually forced his advisor out or if Flynn give his resignation willingly? The consensus view developing at the time was that he willingly turned it in, which matches what senior advisor to the White House Kellyanne Conway said before Trump claimed the next day, that he had let him go. "Morning Joe" on MSNBC broke down the problems with misinformation from the White House and why they will no longer have Kellyanne Conway on.

During the Feb 14th press conference, Spicer also denied Flynn violated the Logan Act, for which some have demanded his arrest for. He added that the main issue was one of trust, but he also followed Trump's lead in saying that illegal leaks exposing the advisor violated national security.

Trump then tweeted that the “real" issue was about illegal leaks. They also determined there was no legal issue with what Flynn had done.

Republicans in line with White House message

What followed were Republicans attempting to bottleneck the message from the White House as House Speaker Paul Ryan agreed in front of reporters that Flynn had to go and that Trump was right to let him go, also repeating the view that it was an issue of trust overall.

The following day Democrat Elijah Cummings said during a press briefing for House Democrats that Republicans were clearly silent over the matter. This was later confirmed by Republican Jason Chaffetz who is the chairman of the oversight committee which would be among the first to start an investigation, viewing Michael Flynn's resignation as “the issue fixing itself,” and who appeared to leave it at that.

Many Republicans felt that Flynn had simply deceived Pence and that the matter was closed. But other Republicans have said that there should not be an investigation on Flynn but rather over the leaking of information. Democrats have been pushing for more investigations for which conducting is under the control of the majority Republican Party, who have shown little interest in seeking a major investigation. Mitch McConnell said that the intelligence committee is already looking at Russian interference from the presidential election and feels that this should be wrapped into those investigations. But in the past, Mitch McConnell has said that an independent investigation was unnecessary and wanted to just leave it to the committee.

Little interest for investigation among Republicans

During the Tuesday press conference, Sean Spicer had also said that President Trump was not aware that Flynn had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador until after the Department of Justice had told them on January 26. Many have argued that this was not true and even Trump said during his press conference on that Thursday that he did not tell Flynn to talk with Russia but if he did, that was his job. He also has continued to berate the press for their coverage on the matter, deflecting any attempt to view the call from Flynn as previous campaign connection to Russia.

Along with Democrats, some Republicans say that there should be a more transparent investigation with hearings as the one by the intelligence committee is private. But there are other reports that say for instance that House Intelligence Chairman Devon Nunez who has been very supportive of advisor Flynn and was also part of the Trump transition team, isn't investigating until they have the facts.
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