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Flynn declared that he had had no such conversations, absolutely no conversation, he confirmed again, and the interview, attended by senior National Security Council official and spokesman Michael Anton, ended soon thereafter. But later that day, DeYoung called Anton and asked if she could use Flynn’s denial on the record. Anton said he saw no problem—after all, the White House wanted Flynn’s denial to be clear—and notified Flynn. A few hours later, Flynn called Anton back with some worries about the statement. Anton applied an obvious test: “If you knew that there might be a tape of this conversation that could surface, would you still be a hundred percent sure?” Flynn equivocated, and Anton, suddenly concerned, advised him that if he couldn’t be sure they ought to “walk it back.” The Post piece, which appeared the next day under three other bylines—indicating that DeYoung’s interview was hardly the point of the story—contained new leaked details of the Kislyak phone call, which the Post now said had indeed dealt with the issue of sanctions. The article also contained Flynn’s denial—‘he twice said ‘no’ ”—as well as his walk-back: “On Thursday, Flynn, through his spokesman, backed away from the denial. The spokesman said Flynn ‘indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.’ ” After the Post story, Priebus and Bannon questioned Flynn again. Flynn professed not to remember what he had said; if the subject of sanctions came up, he told them, it was at most glossed over. Curiously, no one seemed to have actually heard the conversation with Kislyak or seen a transcript. Meanwhile, the vice president’s people, caught unaware by the sudden Flynn controversy, were taking particular umbrage, less about Flynn’s possible misrepresentations than about the fact that they had been kept out of the loop. But the president was undisturbed—or, in one version, “aggressively defensive’—and, while the greater White House looked on askance, Trump chose to take Flynn with him to Mar-a- Lago for his scheduled weekend with Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister. That Saturday night, in a bizarre spectacle, the Mar-a-Lago terrace became a public Situation Room when President Trump and Prime Minister Abe openly discussed how to respond to North Korea’s launch of a missile three hundred miles into the Sea of Japan. Standing right over the president’s shoulder was Michael Flynn. If Bannon, Priebus, and Kushner believed that Flynn’s fate hung in the balance, the president seemed to have no such doubts. For the senior White House staff, the underlying concern was less about getting rid of Flynn than about the president’s relationship with Flynn. What had Flynn, in essence a spy in a soldier’s uniform, roped the president into? What might they have got up to together? HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019964