Friday brought another reminder that Ivanka Trump may have massively downplayed her role in her father’s presidential campaign, transition and White House administration.

While Ivanka famously said she didn’t like to get involved much in politics, it appears now that she and her husband Jared Kushner have been major influences in some of President Donald Trump’s most controversial hiring and firing decisions, including the decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Now it turns out that Ivanka Trump was instrumental in bringing Michael T. Flynn into her father’s administration to serve as national security adviser, according to a report in the New Yorker.

This report, from late October, is worth revisiting after Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador last December.

The guilty plea by the retired Army general has brought a number of stunning developments, the New York Times reported.

The first is that Flynn has become the first senior White House official to agree to cooperate in the special counsel’s inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But perhaps more alarming to Ivanka and to her father is that New York Times and other outlets reported that Jared Kushner is believed to be the “very senior member” of the presidential team who directed Flynn to make contact with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.

The New York Times reported that Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak were part of a coordinated effort by aides running Trump’s transition to create foreign policy before they were in power.

These efforts undermined the existing policy of President Barack Obama, the Times said. Senior Obama officials had told the Trump transition team to stop meddling in foreign affairs until after the inauguration, documents released as part of Mr. Flynn’s plea agreement show.

But if Flynn played such a central role in Trump’s transition, the president has in part his daughter to thank, according to the New Yorker report by Jane Mayer.

In November 2016, three days after Trump won the election, Ivanka announced she had invited Flynn, a loyal supporter, to attend a transition meeting that was then chaired by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. At the time Ivanka had worked in her father’s real estate company and as a lifestyle entrepreneur, but she had no experience in government service. Nonetheless, she was a member of the transition team’s executive council.

As Flynn walked in, Christie tried to regain control of the meeting, but Ivanka took over, Mayer reported.

Mayer described the scene this way:

“Praising Flynn’s ‘amazing loyalty to my father,’ (Ivanka) turned to Flynn and asked, ‘General, what job do you want?’ A participant at the meeting said, ‘It was like Princess Ivanka had laid the sword on Flynn’s shoulders and said, ‘Rise and go forth.’ ”

A source close to Ivanka didn’t deny the account, Mayer said, but suggested that it exaggerated her role and that Ivanka was merely trying to show appreciation for Flynn’s support.

Flynn expressed interest in becoming secretary of state or secretary of defense, Mayer said.

Trump’s son Eric also was present at the meeting, Mayer said. Eric Trump asked Flynn if he had been out of uniform long enough to head the Pentagon. Flynn said that he could probably get a congressional waiver, but would settle for national security adviser.

This scenario prompted this tweet from Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for Obama’s National Security Council and a co-founder of the liberal Crooked Media podcast company.

Christie tired to block Flynn but @IvankaTrump overruled him. Smart to have your kids pick your national security team. https://t.co/ojZeMgUKu0 pic.twitter.com/nGuCpH57Y8 — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) December 1, 2017

Christie was eventually removed as chairman of the transition team — he felt, at Kushner’s urging, Mayer said. Christie had also been one of Trump’s top considerations for vice president but was pushed aside in favor of Mike Pence.

Christie suspected that Ivanka Trump and Kushner had turned Trump against him. The animosity apparently went back years to when Christie, as a U.S. attorney, prosecuted Kushner’s father for tax fraud and other crimes. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon admitted to Christie that Kushner “had been against him all along, for personal reasons.”

In any case, Christie’s removal from the transition team opened the door for Flynn to make his way into the White House, Mayer wrote.

After Vice President-elect Pence took over as head of the transition team, there was “no indication” that he “raised any objections about Flynn to Trump,” Mayer said.

On Nov. 17, 2016, “after little vetting,” Flynn was named national security adviser.

Pence failed to heed a warning from Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, the ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In a letter, he warned Pence about Flynn’s questionable ethics. During the campaign, Flynn had failed to disclose that he had done paid lobbying work for Turkish interests.

Trump also failed to heed warnings about Flynn from Obama and from former acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates.

Flynn had been fired by Obama from his job leading the Defense Intelligence Agency before he joined the Trump campaign. American intelligence agencies had grown concerned about Flynn’s communications with Kislyak, and Yates warned the White House that Flynn might have been compromised by the Russians, Mayer said.

Flynn only lasted 24 days in the White House, resigning Feb. 13 after it was learned that he had misled Pence and other top White House officials about his conversations with Kislyak.

Ivanka Trump’s role in Flynn getting a job in her father’s White House is just the latest example of how she and her husband haven’t done such a great job as unofficial White House personnel managers.

Ivanka, a senior White House assistant, reportedly encouraged Trump to hire Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. His 10-day tenure was nothing short of disastrous.

It turns out that Trump may also have his daughter and son-in-law to thank for encouraging him to hire Paul Manafort to work for his campaign between March and August 2016.

Trump Tower neighbor Manafort had boasted about managing presidential campaigns around the world. To Ivanka and Kushner, it may have seemed that Manafort would bring professionalism to a campaign that up until that point had been run in a rather scatter-shot way.

But they either weren’t aware or weren’t too concerned that Manafort’s past clients also included notorious strongmen: former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, Angolan military leader Jonas Savimbi and, most notably Viktor Yanukovych, the corrupt former president of Ukraine.

Manafort was ousted as Trump campaign’s chair after it was learned that he had accepted nearly $13 million in off-the-record payments from Yanukovych’s political party.

In late October, Manafort also became one of three former Trump associates to be indicted as a result of the special counsel investigation. He and his former longtime aide Richard “Rick” Gates were charged with 12 counts related to tax evasion, foreign lobbying and laundering $75 million in payments they received as a result of working for pro-Russian elements in Ukraine between 2006 and 2015.

A third campaign staffer, former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, also pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI investigators in connection with Robert Mueller’s investigation.