April 27, 2017

Today's White House Daily Briefing featured Sean Spicer in the role of a guy who just doesn't have a good answer for anything, so gives out bad answers for everything.

When pressed by Major Garrett and Jim Acosta on whether there were any regrets for the lack of vetting of General Michael Flynn, Spicer blamed the Obama administration for giving him a security clearance in 2014, before Flynn's contacts with and payments from foreign agents.

Pretending he understood how security clearances work, Spicer basically claimed everyone is asked if they already have a security clearance. If they do, great. If they don't, go stand in line for one.

CNN's Jim Acosta then followed up with his own skeptical question. "That's the impression you're giving, General Flynn walked through the door with just the clearance that was conducted by the Obama administration? That doesn't make any sense!"

After telling Acosta to "calm down" and reminding him that the children were gone in a condescending fashion, Spicer leaned in.

"We trust when you were cleared first time whether -- if you were cleared on December 15th or January 20th, that you were still -- that your background check cleared," Spicer snarled. "Every individual who came into this White House applied for a security clearance or had one."

Continuing his irrelevant analogy, he said, "Everyone in the government goes through the same SF-86 process. Every single person. And so why would you re-run a background check on someone who is the head of the department of the Defense Intelligence Agency that had and did maintain a high-level security clearance? That's it."

There was more along these lines but you get the idea. In 2014, General Flynn's security clearance was renewed. Later that year, he was fired by the Obama administration.

Flynn was warned upon his "retirement" that he could not accept payments from foreign countries.

He subsequently accepted payments from Turkey and from RT in violation of that agreement after he "retired" in 2014.

The responsibility for properly vetting Michael Flynn before appointing him National Security Advisor rests with Trump and his transition/administration alone. There is no responsibility on Obama's part. Flynn failed to disclose his contacts, or else he did and no one in the Trump transition cared.

Or they knew already, and it was a feature, not a bug. Choose your poison, Sean. Any way you cut it, this is on Trump.

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