On December 29, 2016, the day President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for meddling in the U.S. election, retired General Michael Flynn, who would become President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, spoke by telephone multiple times with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. When that news broke a week before Trump’s inauguration, basically every senior official in the incoming administration, including Vice President–elect Mike Pence, told the public that Flynn had not discussed sanctions at all.

Knowingly or not, they were all propagating a lie.

It should not be assumed that Pence in particular didn’t know the truth of the matter when he claimed Flynn and Kislyak exchanged Christmas pleasantries. Pence had access to all the country’s secrets and at the very least we should assume he could have gotten to the bottom of the matter if he’d really wanted to. But now that the cat’s totally out of the bag, Team Pence is letting reporters know, through anonymous leaks, that the vice president is very mad Flynn hung him out to dry.

In a normal administration—indeed, in any competently managed enterprise—someone who misled the leadership on such a high-stakes matter would’ve been a goner long ago. In this one, Flynn apparently has Trump’s “full confidence.” Knives are out for Flynn across the government, and he may ultimately be forced out, but Trump apparently wants to “keep moving forward,” a source told the Wall Street Journal.

But even in a dysfunctional White House, you wouldn’t necessarily expect the story to end there. A vice president with any dignity or concern for the ultimate fate of the administration and the country would do more than whine namelessly to the press. He would give the president an ultimatum: Flynn goes or I go.