The resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn did little to calm the chaos at the White House, where staff spent Tuesday scrambling to deflect blame for the rising scandal about Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials — including who knew what about the conversations and when.

Other ongoing controversies intruded on the White House’s ability to impose its own narrative on the Flynn situation, adding to the sense of confusion in President Donald Trump’s Washington.


Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub released a letter recommending that the White House investigate Kellyanne Conway and consider disciplinary action against her for encouraging the public to buy clothes from the line marketed by Ivanka Trump, the president’s oldest daughter, after Nordstrom stopped carrying it.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have been hesitant to chastise the new administration, also began asserting some distance from the president. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a request to the White House on Tuesday for answers about security protocols at Mar-a-Lago and details about potentially sensitive documents after club members photographed the president and senior staff reading on the club’s dining terrace Saturday.

And Senate Republicans called for investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) left the door open to supporting an independent investigative commission, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appeared to support the idea of requiring Flynn to testify before committee investigations. “What I’d like to know is, did Gen. Flynn make this phone call by himself? If he was directed, by who?” Graham asked. “Did they try to engage the Russians before they were in office? Was this part of a continuing pattern between the Trump people and Russia?”

White House staff seemed disorganized in their response to the crises.

For the second time in less than a day, White House press secretary Sean Spicer contradicted statements from others in the White House. He told reporters at Tuesday’s daily press briefing that Trump demanded Flynn’s resignation, whereas senior administration officials said Monday night that Flynn decided to step down on his own.

Spicer also said that Trump had been aware of and was reviewing Flynn’s actions “for several weeks” after having been briefed by White House counsel Don McGahn. The president told reporters aboard Air Force One last Friday that he “didn’t know about” a Washington Post report in which Flynn acknowledged he’d discussed sanctions imposed by the Obama administration on a December call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — and that he’d misled Vice President Mike Pence, who publicly said Flynn hadn’t brought up sanctions on the calls.

On Tuesday evening, a staffer for Pence confirmed that the vice president had been kept in the dark for weeks about the truth of Flynn's conversation — only learning about it from the Feb. 9 Post story — although Trump himself had been briefed about Flynn's call on Jan. 26.

The press secretary said the president demanded Flynn’s resignation because he’d lost trust in his national security adviser, not because of concerns about the legality of Flynn’s actions or their impact on national security.

The resignation came shortly after a second Post report about Justice Department officials briefing McGahn on their concerns surrounding Flynn. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Flynn was interviewed days after Trump’s inauguration by FBI agents investigating his conversations with Kislyak.

“The question wasn’t, ‘Did he do something illegal?’” Spicer said. “It was, ‘Could he be trusted further?”

Flynn, a retired three-star lieutenant general who was among Trump’s earliest supporters in the national security establishment, had long been the target of suspicion by Democrats and Trump opponents. He traveled with Trump to Florida over the weekend, joining the president as he hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—and advised the two leaders on Saturday, when they interrupted their golf weekend to address North Korea’s launch of a test missile.

White House aides sent conflicting messages Monday about Flynn’s fate. In an afternoon appearance, Conway asserted in an interview with MSNBC that Flynn still "enjoys the full confidence of the president.” Less than an hour later, Spicer issued a formal statement informing the media that Trump was "evaluating" the Flynn situation. Ultimately, it was chief strategist Steve Bannon, Flynn's only remaining defender and closest confidant in the White House, who delivered the news in the residence Monday evening that Trump needed him to step down.

On Tuesday morning, following Flynn's late night resignation, Conway went on television again to spin the developments, stating that "in the end it was [Flynn] misleading the vice president that made the situation unsustainable.” She was then asked why action wasn't taken sooner given that McGahn had been briefed weeks ago by acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was dismissed by Trump after she refused to defend his Jan. 27 order blocking citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S.

At Tuesday's briefing, Spicer said McGahn had briefed the president about Yates’ concerns, though he declined to say exactly what the president had been told. A White House aide said earlier in the day that the president had not been completely briefed, and that McGahn and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus were in “hot water” for it.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday evening that he thought Priebus was doing a “great job.”

The disarray in the White House comes as Trump is facing serious national security challenges, including Russia’s ongoing incursions into Ukraine and North Korea’s nuclear missile test.

Some speculated that, with Flynn out of the picture, Defense Secretary James Mattis might begin to take a bigger role in the administration. Mattis was inside the White House residence Monday night along with Bannon, Priebus and Trump's adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, when Flynn resigned, and is involved with choosing Flynn's successor.

Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a former Mattis deputy, is the early favorite for the job, according to several White House sources. National Security Council chief of staff Keith Kellogg has been named acting national security adviser until the post is filled.

On Capitol Hill, Republican senators remain confused about who has authority within the White House. “We don’t know who is in charge,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has privately expressed frustration at not knowing whether to contact Kushner or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss the administration’s Middle East policy, according to a source familiar with his thinking. (Cruz, through a spokesman, called the source's statement untrue.)

"I can't figure out what's going on over there," said a foreign policy staffer in the office of another GOP senator. "I've never seen anything like this. We don't know who the point person is on national security issues. On anything, really."

Burgess Everett and Elana Schor contributed to this report.

