There is yet one more question that #Democrats and the majority of American citizens want answered: Why, if #President Trump was aware that national security adviser #Michael Flynn had lied to his White House colleagues (and therefore stood as a vulnerable target to Russian decoys) did he not fire him at once?

This enigmatic question has floated in the air for many months and yet America still feels that it doesn't have an #adequate answer. All the newspaper columns, inches of online news space and op-eds in the world don't seem to give the country the answer that it deserves, or indeed, the feeling of an adequate conclusion to a surprising and perplexing development in the capital's seat of power.

On Monday, during acting attorney general #Sally Yates's testimony, the mystery merely deepened as the questions about #Michael Flynn's delayed resignation still lay unanswered, an enigma that taunts and teases.

Yates's testimony read like a dramatic episode from a political thriller – House of Cards perhaps, or maybe even All the Presidents Men – as she told of her frazzled and hectic rushing – on exactly the 26th of January – to caution the newfangled #White House counsel that, surprisingly, the national security advisor Flynn may possibly be a compromised target of #Russian interference and corruption. This, she said, since he had lied both in public and in private about his connections and communications with Russian bureaucrats and officials.

And then….

President Trump waited out exactly #18 days to pull the trigger and fire Flynn; this after reports by the Washington Post detailed the information and warnings that the White house had been given on the worrying matter.

And only hours later, White House press spokesperson #Sean Spicer declined to “re-litigate” the delay of 18 days when he gave his everyday briefing on Monday January 14th at the White House.

There were then a number of elucidations and supposed justifications given by Trump's administrative officials in the following months.

White House's cracked reasoning

The next day following Michael Flynn's firing, Spicer was busy during most of his daily briefing answering those questions that the 18-day delay had inspired.

He recalled being warned by Mrs Yates and described this as merely a 'heads up' and then described how her information was swiftly passed onto President Trump.

#President Trump, according to Spicer, had his own doubts, being of the opinion that the national security advisor hadn’t done anything wrong and wanted a review taken out of the whole issue. Spicer relayed this to the press, saying that Trump “instinctively thought that General Flynn did not do anything wrong" and that the White House's counsel substantiated that point of view. And he then added that in permitting the legal team at the #White House to review whether there had been a law broken by the national security advisor, immediately the officials determined that there hadn't.

When questioned further about President Trump not acting with more urgency, Spicer chalked this up to Trump giving Flynn a fair right to innocent before proven guilty – or 'due process', in Washington talk.

And then only 48 hours after Spicer’s January 14th comments, #Trump, questioned about Flynn during a news conference, said that the national security advisor was a fine person but they he himself was not content with the style and tenor in which Flynn had given information to #Vice President Mike Pence. Trump focused on the ethics of the press instead, claiming they had broken libel laws to access records.

Then on February 19 White House chief of staff #Reince Priebus was questioned about the delay in the media and he, like Spicer, also called the Sally Yates message a 'heads-up' that alerting them to the fact that something in the Flynn story wasn't adding up to a full and adequate picture.

Reibus described the conversation as veering into the territory of 'did he lie to us and Pence'; that that's when they asked Flynn to stand down. Reibus thus called the whole process a slow-speed development along the lines of what the White House counsel was simultaneously discovering.

How interesting then, that on March 6th, the #White House explanation had become more concise and more adequate. Flynn had not been straight with the vice president.

“He asked him to resign. I think the #president dealt with it.” And then another four days alter the press questioned Spicer on ethical standards in the White House and the press secretary didn't mention the 18-day interval. This is when Spicer said that Flynn had betrayed the vice president's trust and was hence let go.