Rachel Maddow Calls Out Mike Pence For Lying That He Knew Nothing Of Flynn's Turkish Connection

Mike Pence, font of credibility, gets called out once again.

By ursulafaw  

Saturday Mar 11, 2017 · 1:30 PM USMST

Daily Kos 

It's bad enough that Michael Flynn's lobbying connections in Turkey necessitated that Flynn should have registered as a foreign agent, the first time in history that a national security adviser was ever in the position of advising a sitting U.S. president on foreign policy while concurrently representing the interests of a foreign country.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that Trump is claiming that he knew nothing of the matter until this week, although the Washington Post says otherwise and Mike Pence is denying the matter outright. Sean Spicer spun the story yesterday and Mike Pence flat out lied, according to Rachel Maddow.  Here's Spicer's spin from The Washington Post:

“The burden is on the individual to seek the legal advice or professional expertise to decide what they have to file and not,” Spicer said, parsing his explanation as to how someone who might have had to register as a foreign agent was hired as national security adviser.

“It’s not up to the transition attorney to go through someone’s livelihood and determine what they need to seek,” Spicer said. “They were given the proper legal advice at the time, which was to seek expertise in that matter.”

Now here's Mike Pence, same Washington Post article:

On Thursday evening, in an interview with Pence, Fox News’s Bret Baier pressed the vice president on reports that Flynn had registered as a foreign agent lobbying, essentially, on behalf of the Turkish government.

“Well, let me say, hearing that story today was the first I heard of it, and I fully support the decision that President Trump made to ask for General Flynn's resignation,” Pence said. “The first I heard of it, and I think it is an affirmation of the President’s decision to ask General Flynn to resign.”

Rachel Maddow isn't buying Pence's story, that this is brand new information to him, from RawStory:

“That cannot be true,” Maddow said bluntly. “It is impossible this is the first Mike Pence has heard of it. Mike Pence was the head of the [Trump] transition, while all of those news stories of Mike Flynn being on the Turkish government’s payroll were breaking. He was the head of the transition when Mike Flynn was being vetted for the National Security Advisor job. He was the head of the transition when Congress formally notified the head of the transition that Mike Flynn appears to be on a foreign government’s payroll. He was the head of the transition when Mike Flynn’s personal lawyers came and told the transition that Mike Flynn maybe needed to register as a foreign agent.”

However, Pence now claims that he’s only now hearing about the information. Maddow called it absolute bunk.

“It’s something to pick someone manifestly unfit for the job of National Security Advisor to be National Security Advisor, that’s one thing,” she continued. “It is another thing when you bring somebody on board to a top national security position while they’re also on the payroll of a foreign government! And you either don’t notice or you don’t care.”