White House counsel Don McGahn warned President Donald Trump 10 months ago that he believed former national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the FBI, according to multiple reports.
Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, told Axios that McGahn conveyed to the president in January his belief that Flynn told the FBI the same lie that he told Vice President Mike Pence.
According to Dowd, McGahn's suspicions were based on a conversation with then acting attorney general Sally Yates.
According to Dowd, Flynn had "given the agents the same story he gave the Vice President," but that "for some reason, the [Justice] Department didn't want to make an accusation of lying."
Further, Yates did not tell McGahn that Flynn was under investigation.
"All the president knew was that the department was not accusing him of lying," Dowd told Axios in its Sunday report.
CNN reported Monday that it confirmed that McGahn had shared his concern with Trump, adding that McGahn urged the president to fire Flynn.
Despite McGahn's concerns, Flynn continued on as Trump's NSA for a few more weeks before ultimately being forced to resign Feb. 14 for lying to Pence about his conversations with then Russia ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the White House said at the time.
"Whether or not he actually misled the vice president was the issue, and that was ultimately what led to the president asking for and accepting the resignation of General Flynn. That's it. Pure and simple, it was a matter of trust," then WH press secretary Sean Spicer said.
Then came Saturday, when Trump said he fired Flynn for also lying to the FBI.
However, Dowd told Axios that he was the one who messed up and wrote that controversial Saturday tweet.
Dowd's outing of the McGahn-Trump conversation has prompted renewed scrutiny of the timeline, prompting questions of when exactly Trump knew of Flynn's lies to the FBI and how that relates to the president's conversations with then FBI Director James Comey about dropping the probe into Flynn.
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