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Texas Children's Hospital released photos Tuesday of conjoined twins that a team of doctors will work to separate.

 Now estimated to weigh 10 pounds, 4 ounces each, the girls are being cared for by a team of specialists in the level IV neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Texas Children’s Hospital. (Photo: Allen S.Kramer TCH)

 HOUSTON -- Conjoined twins will be separated in a delicate and risky surgical procedure later this year at Texas Children's Hospital. But surgeons anticipate excellent results, and a Texas mom says her hope and faith in a positive outcome continues to grow every day.

 Elysse Mata from Lubbock remembers the exact day she learned her pregnancy was not proceeding as expected. It was January 13th. She was 19 weeks pregnant. She went to her doctor for the ultrasound procedure that would tell her the gender of her baby. The ultrasound technician looked puzzled, left the room, and returned with the doctor.

 "Here's one head, here's the other head," she said the doctor told her. "And that's when I interrupted him and said wait, two heads? He said yes we think you have twins. Well, we know you have twins. But we think they're conjoined."

 "That one moment was probably the worst moment of my life," she said of the sudden fear that her babies might not survive.

 The girls were born, at 31 weeks, at Texas Children's Pavilion for Women, weighing roughly 3 pounds 7 ounces each. They are joined at the chest and abdomen. They share a liver, diaphragm, the pericardial sac (the lining of their hearts), and intestines. Doctors say it appears the girls also share some lung tissue which they believe can be easily separated.

 Elysse and John Mata named them Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith.

 "You can't have hope without faith and you can't have faith without hope," said Mata in an interview with KHOU 11 News while wearing a t-shirt with "Hope and Faith" printed on the front. "And if one baby would have gone, the other would too. And that was a big fear. And so right away I knew you have hope and faith."

 And they have that same hope and faith in the outcome of the surgical separation expected to happen in the next three months.

 "I expect it to go well. Will it be easy? No," said Dr. Stephen Welty, Chief of Neonatology at Texas Children's Hospital. "The best thing to do is to do the safest thing, which is grow them up, get them bigger, more healthy with great nutrition and great developmental care and then separate them in a time which is as safe as possible."

 Dr. Darrell L. Cass, Co-Director of Texas Children's Fetal Center, says the process of separation will begin with the placement of tissue expanders to help induce the growth of additional skin that will be needed once the two babies are separated. The separation itself, conducted by two surgical teams, will likely happen when the babies are between 6 to 8 months of age.

 Cass says the surgery is risky, there is always the risk of death for one or both children, but that he believes the risk is small and that they are anticipating an excellent outcome.

 Photos:

 More information: Fundraising for Faith and Hope

 Related story:Conjoined twins born in Houston

 Read or Share this story: http://www.khou.com/story/news/health/2014/09/02/texas-childrens-hospital-releases-photos-of-conjoined-twins/14976891/ ||||| UPDATE 2/5/15:A little more than a year ago, Eric and Elysse Mata learned they were having conjoined twins. Now at 9 months old, doctors are prepping the girls for seperation surgery. Originally set for December, their surgery has been pushed back and will take place in this month.

 Since March 20th, 2014 the family has been living in houston where the girls are staying. However, Eric has recently had to return to work in Lubbock. This means driving back and forth, a 10 hour trip one way, as much as he can.

 This money will help Eric continue to make the journey to be with his family, as well as aid in the families displacement which includes paying two rents, one for Elysse and Azariah as they stay in Houston with the girls and one for Eric while he works in Lubbock and prepares a home for his family. The money will also help the girls during their recovery in Houston and when they get home. Lastly as the girls surgery is coming up, it is now time for the family to start preparing to bring the girls home.

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 On January 13th, Eric and Elysse Mata went to their first ultrasound

 hoping to find out if they had a boy or a girl on the way. Little did they know, they were going to find out much more. The doctors informed them that they were having not one, but two girls. The girls were conjoined at the chest with a partially shared diaphragm and liver. Their chances of survival were a mere 20% which inspired their middle names, Faith and Hope. Despite the odds, on April 11th the girls were born at 31 weeks, early but healthy enough. Together they were 7lbs 9oz.

 Today they are a healthy 6lbs each. Faith is still breathing with the support of a c-pap machine and has a feeding tube. Hope is starting to eat from a bottle. Once they reach full term and are eating and breathing without assistance, they can go home. This is only the beginning as they will be prepping for separation surgery when they are about 8 months followed by rehabilitation.

 To get ready for separation, at 4-6 months, the doctors will put in tissue expanders. These expanders will stretch the skin and will require weekly trips to the hospital to add saline. It will take 6-8 weeks for the skin to stretch enough to cover the area after separation. After seraration, the girls will go to a rehab center to catch up-- learn to balance on their own, crawl, and walk.

  ||||| Conjoined twins Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith were successfully separated during surgery Feb. 17 at Texas children's Hospital. (Photo: Allen S.Kramer / Texas Children's Hospital)

 HOUSTON – Elysse Mata still remembers the day a doctor told her she was pregnant with conjoined twins.

 It was Jan. 13, 2014, and she was 19 weeks pregnant.

 It wasn't long after—12 weeks later on April 11, to be exact—that Mata gave birth to Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith Mata, twin girls joined at the chest and abdomen.

 After only 10 months of living conjoined, a team of doctors at Texas Children's Hospital successfully separated the girls during a 26-hour surgery Feb. 17.

 It was a trying surgery for doctors, who had to separate the Knatalye and Adeline from the chest wall, lungs, pericardial sac (the lining of the heart), diaphragm, liver, intestines, colon and pelvis.

 More: Hope, faith strong for conjoined twins at Texas Children's Hospital

 "This surgery was not without its challenges with the girls sharing several organ systems. Our team has been preparing for this surgery for months, and we've done everything from working with our radiology experts to build a 3-D model of their organs, to conducting simulations of the actual separation surgery," said Dr. Darrell Cass, pediatric surgeon and co-director of Texas Children's Fetal Center.

 It took doctors roughly 18 hours to separate the two, while doctors worked on Knatalye for 23 hours and 26 on Adeline. Specialty doctors from pediatric surgery, plastic surgery, cardiovascular surgery, urology, liver transplant surgery, orthopedic surgery and pediatric gynecology assisted in the surgery.

 Knatalye and Adeline will be overseen by a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit during their recovery for the ensuing months. Doctors said they expect they'll undergo additional surgeries in the future. Doctors said they're unsure of a possible release date.

 "We are so grateful to all the surgeons and everyone who cared for our daughters and gave them the incredible chance to live separate lives," Mata said. "We know how much planning and time went into this surgery and we are so blessed to be at a place like Texas Children's where we have access to the surgeons and caretakers that have made this dream a reality."

 Read or Share this story: http://www.khou.com/story/news/health/2015/02/23/conjoined-twins-separated-at-texas-childrens-hospital/23866141/ ||||| PRESS RELEASE FROM TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL:

 HOUSTON – (Feb. 23, 2015) – Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith Mata, conjoined twin girls born at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women in April 2014, underwent a successful separation surgery on Feb. 17 at Texas Children’s Hospital. A team of more than 26 clinicians including 12 surgeons, six anesthesiologists and eight surgical nurses, among others, worked together to separate the girls who shared a chest wall, lungs, pericardial sac (the lining of the heart), diaphragm, liver, intestines, colon and pelvis. During the complex surgery, the team worked for approximately 23 hours on Knatalye and 26 hours on Adeline with the official separation occurring approximately 18 hours into the surgery. Among the surgical subspecialties involved were pediatric surgery, plastic surgery, cardiovascular surgery, urology, liver transplant surgery, orthopedic surgery and pediatric gynecology.

 “This is the first time a separation surgery for thoraco-omphalo-ischiopagus twins with this particular configuration has been successful,” said Dr. Darrell Cass, pediatric surgeon, co-director of Texas Children's Fetal Center and associate professor of surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine. “This surgery was not without its challenges with the girls sharing several organ systems. Our team has been preparing for this surgery for months and we’ve done everything from working with our radiology experts to build a 3-D model of their organs, to conducting simulations of the actual separation surgery.”

 A multidisciplinary team is currently caring for the girls in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit where it is expected they will continue to recover for a couple of months. It is anticipated they will undergo additional surgeries in the future.

 “We are so grateful to all of the surgeons and everyone who cared for our daughters and gave them the incredible chance to live separate lives,” said Elysse Mata, mother of the babies. “We know how much planning and time went into this surgery and we are so blessed to be at a place like Texas Children’s where we have access to the surgeons and caretakers that have made this dream a reality. We also want to express our gratitude to all of the people that have prayed and provided support to our family over the last 10 months.”

 About the Mata twins

 Knatalye and Adeline were born on April 11 at 3:41 a.m. at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women, estimated to weigh 3 pounds, 7 ounces each. Delivered via Caesarean-section at 31 weeks gestation, Knatalye and Adeline were welcomed by their parents, Elysse and John Eric Mata, and their 5-year-old brother, Azariah.

 The family, from Lubbock, learned during a routine ultrasound on Jan. 13, 2014 that Elysse was carrying twins and they were conjoined. Subsequently, the family was referred to Texas Children's Fetal Center where they underwent extensive prenatal imaging, multidisciplinary consultation and development of plans to achieve a safe delivery and postnatal care.

 For the last 10 months, Knatalye and Adeline were cared for by a team of specialists in the Level IV neonatal intensive care unit at Texas Children's Hospital.

 In December 2014, the girls underwent a five-hour surgery at Texas Children’s to place custom-made tissue expanders into their chest and abdomen area. The tissue expanders helped to stretch the babies’ skin in preparation for their separation surgery. More information about the tissue expansion is available here.

 The girls will remain at Texas Children’s under the care of a team of specialists until their discharge date, which is at this time unknown.

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What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith Mata were born conjoined on April 11 and spent 10 months connected at the chest and abdomen—but on Tuesday at Texas Children's Hospital, the girls were successfully separated. After months of preparation, a team of more than 26 medical professionals from numerous specialties took 18 hours to separate the chest wall, lungs, diaphragm, liver, intestines, colon, pelvis, and lining of the heart, according to a press release. In total, Knatalye was in surgery for 23 hours, Adeline for 26, KHOU reports. Prior to the procedure, doctors put in tissue expanders designed to stretch their skin, among other preparations. "We've done everything from working with our radiology experts to build a 3D model of their organs, to conducting simulations of the actual separation surgery," says Dr. Darrell Cass, who calls the separation the first successful one for "thoraco-omphalo-ischiopagus twins with this particular configuration." A YouCaring fundraising page for the girls explains that they were given just a 20% chance of survival when their parents learned about their condition at an ultrasound on Jan. 13, 2014; the girls were born early, at 31 weeks, weighing an estimated 3 pounds, 7 ounces each. "You can't have hope without faith, and you can't have faith without hope," mom Elysse told KHOU last year, explaining their names. "And if one baby would have gone, the other would, too. And so right away I knew you have hope and faith." Now she says, "We are so grateful to all the surgeons and everyone who cared for our daughters and gave them the incredible chance to live separate lives." A Facebook page for the girls has pictures of them separated; each will undergo future surgeries. (A woman who didn't know she was pregnant recently birthed a rare type of twins.)


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Former Spokane, Washington NAACP chapter president Rachel Dolezal appears on NBC News on June 16, 2015. (Screenshot)

 Former civic activist Rachel Dolezal went from claiming she is black to questioning whether she is actually part of a white family in an interview aired on Tuesday night with NBC News host Savannah Guthrie.

 “I haven’t had a DNA test. There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents,” said Dolezal, referring to the couple who exposed her last week, resulting in widespread criticism and her decision to step down as the head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

 “There’s a birth certificate that has your name and their names on it,” Guthrie replied, over footage of the document.

 “I’m not necessarily saying that I can prove they’re not,” Dolezal said. “But I don’t know that I can actually prove they are. I mean, the birth certificate is issued a month and a half after I’m born. And certainly there were no medical witnesses to my birth.”

 A 2012 profile of Dolezal stated that she was “born in a teepee.” but her parents revealed last week that she is actually of Czech, Swedish and German descent. Dolezal has continued to argue that she is black.

 “Nothing about being white describes who I am,” she said. “So, what’s the word for it? The closest thing that I can come to is, if you’re black or white, I’m black. I’m more black than I am white.”

 While she has “experimented” with her hair, she told Guthrie, she has not altered her skin.

 “Some days I might spray on bronzer, if I want to get a glow,” Dolezal said. “Other days, I don’t.”

 Watch footage from the interview, as posted online on Tuesday, below. ||||| She would not backpedal, and “I guarantee you she never will,” said her uncle, who took her in more than a decade ago as her marriage crumbled. “That’s part of her persona, never backing down — always forward, totally sure of herself.”

 On Tuesday, Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” show asked her, “When did you start deceiving people?” But Ms. Dolezal, who stepped down on Monday as president of the Spokane N.A.A.C.P. chapter, pushed back.

 “I do take exception to that because it’s a little more complex than me identifying as black, or answering a question of, ‘Are you black or white?’ ” she said. Over the course of the day, she also described herself as “transracial” and said: “Well, I definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes who I am.”

 Her story has set off a national debate about the very meaning of racial identity, with some people applauding her message and goals and others deploring her methods and actions. It was one thing for Ms. Dolezal to identify with, appreciate and even partake in black culture, some critics said, but it was another thing for her to try to become black, going so far as to change her physical appearance.

 “It taps into all of these issues around blackface and wearing blackness and that whole cultural legacy, which makes it that much more vile,” said Baz Dreisinger, an English professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and author of the book “Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture.”

 The term transracial has long been associated with adoptions of a child by a family of a different race. Angela Tucker, a black woman born in Tennessee and adopted by a white family in Bellingham, Wash., said it was “absolutely maddening” to associate the term with Ms. Dolezal’s story.

 “It means a lot to those of us who call ourselves transracial adoptees,” said Ms. Tucker, 29, a social worker who lives in Seattle. “We have grown up in a culture different than what we physically represent. We’ve had to seek out our roots. What Rachel has done is misappropriate that.”

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 Some people who have known Ms. Dolezal only as a black woman said they felt hurt and misled.

 “The issue for me has been the deception, the lie, portraying herself as someone she isn’t,” said Dorothy Webster, a longtime member of the Spokane N.A.A.C.P. and former deputy manager for the city of Spokane. “I cannot rationalize it.”

 Clashing Versions of Past

 Although her advocacy work has admirers, serious questions have been raised about Ms. Dolezal’s credibility — and not just about her race. Her public statements about her family and upbringing have been challenged by relatives, including her parents, creating the odd spectacle of dueling interviews, with her making claims on one network, and them denying them on another. Over the years she has reported numerous complaints with the police of racially motivated harassment and intimidation, though the police have said that none have so far proved credible enough for charges to be brought.

 She is estranged from her parents, Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal, and in Spokane, she has represented a friend, an older African-American man, as her father. When Rachel Dolezal was a teenager, her parents adopted four black children, one of whom now lives with Ms. Dolezal and her son, whom she had with her former husband, Kevin D. Moore, who is black.

 She is also estranged from her biological brother, Joshua, who is facing charges in Colorado that when he was 19 years old, he sexually molested one of his adopted brothers, who was 6 or 7 at the time, in their parents’ home, which was then in Clear Creek County, Colo. Ruthanne Dolezal told People magazine that the molestation charges are not true and were initiated by Rachel.

 An Unorthodox Path

 Ms. Dolezal’s path to this curious point has been unorthodox, beginning with her childhood in a remote corner of northwestern Montana, in and around the little town of Troy. Earlier this year, she told a news organization at Eastern Washington University, where she taught, that she had been born in a tepee, that her mother and stepfather had beaten her and her siblings, that “they would punish us by skin complexion,” and that they lived for a time in South Africa.

 Family members say none of this is true. All agree that she has no stepfather, that this was one of several attempts she has made to deny the existence of her real father, Lawrence. Her parents moved to South Africa after Rachel was grown and out of the house.

 Video

 As for the abuse allegations, “that’s just false,” her father said in an interview on Friday. “That’s the most hurtful.”

 There was a tepee, her uncle, Daniel said, but that was years before Rachel was born, in the early 1970s, when her parents were first married. “Larry and Ruthanne were kind of the quintessential Jesus people, hippies, back to nature, and they set up a tepee and lived in it for a year,” Daniel Dolezal said. “Drove my parents crazy, but nobody was born in the tepee.”

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 Ms. Dolezal said Tuesday on “Today” that at age 5, “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and the black curly hair, you know.” Her parents, appearing later on Fox News, denied that.

 Daniel Dolezal said Tuesday that her recollection of her 5-year-old self did not ring true. “She probably wouldn’t have known any black people” then, he said. (Efforts to reach Rachel Dolezal, Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal, and Joshua Dolezal on Tuesday were not successful.)

 There is no hint of childhood racial tension in a memoir that her brother Joshua, an English professor at Central College in Iowa, wrote. The book, “Down From the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging,” describes a childhood blending religious fervor with a frontier lifestyle.

 “My father reads from the book of Jeremiah,” he wrote. “The cover of his Bible is made of tanned elk hide that my mother sewed into the binding after cutting away the commercial hardback.”

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 Rachel was home-schooled for at least part of the time she was in high school, her uncle said. And when she was between the ages of 15 and 17, her parents adopted four black infants.

 “She immediately was drawn to them,” her father said. “Ever since then she’s had a tremendous affinity with African-Americans.”

 Ms. Dolezal said Tuesday that at the time, she thought of herself as white, but that began to change with the arrival of her new siblings, as she wondered, “Who is going to be the link for the kids in coming to the family?”

 She learned of John M. Perkins, a Mississippi minister who preached racial reconciliation and social justice and, along with his son, Spencer, built what he called “intentional Christian communities,” including one called Antioch, in Jackson, Miss. Based largely on that connection, she chose to attend Belhaven College, a small Christian school in Jackson, and frequently visited Antioch, a home with about 25 other people near the Belhaven campus.

 Black in a ‘White Body’

 “She adopted us as surrogate parents, and we adopted her as surrogate daughter,” said Ronald Potter, a brother-in-law of Spencer Perkins, who lived at Antioch and taught religion at Belhaven. Mr. Potter said, “We got very close with her.”

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 He described Ms. Dolezal as someone who was “extremely” socially conscious, much more so than the other students seemed to be. The first time he met her, he said, she reminded him of “a black girl in a white body,” like “hearing a black song by a white artist.”

 But she was “snow white, white-white, lily white,” he said. “I had no idea that years later, she would match the body with the soul.”

 Ms. Dolezal graduated from Belhaven in 2000 and that year married Mr. Moore. They moved to Washington, D.C., where she enrolled as a graduate student in art at Howard University, a historically black school. In 2002, she received a master’s degree in fine art, and days later, she gave birth to her son.

 At Howard, as at Belhaven, her art focused on the black experience and racial reconciliation, but there was still no question about her own identity; in college and in graduate school, she was known as white.

 In fact, Ms. Dolezal sued Howard, claiming that it had discriminated against her, in part for being white. She said she was denied financial help because the university’s attitude was, “You probably have white relatives that can afford to help you with your tuition,” she said on “Today.” Howard declined to comment on the case.

 She and her husband, a physical therapist, moved to the tiny town of Bonners Ferry in far northern Idaho, not far from her parents. But in 2004, her uncle said, she left her husband, and moved in with him in Coeur d’Alene, living for several months in the basement.

 She found various kinds of work, including selling her art, and teaching art, and she became involved in minority rights causes in Coeur d’Alene and nearby Spokane. Within a few years, family members said, they began to hear from others that Ms. Dolezal was identifying herself as something other than white. They said her background was European, except for a small fraction that is Native American.

 In police reports around the region about complaints she made beginning in 2005, she is identified as white. By 2009, the reports call her a black woman. Former co-workers at the education institute and the N.A.A.C.P. said she told them she was partly black.

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 In 2008, she was hired as the education coordinator at the North Idaho Human Rights Education Institute and worked there until 2010. “Ms. Dolezal portrayed herself as African-American at that time,” the institute said in a statement on Tuesday.

 “She was extremely gifted and produced very, very powerful exhibits for the institute” recalled Tony Stewart, a retired North Idaho College professor and longtime civil rights activist. He said he and others who met Dolezal in 2008 were left with the clear impression she was black.

 “Yes, we did think she was a person of color,” Mr. Stewart said Tuesday.

 She taught courses at North Idaho College, and later also at Eastern Washington University, where she worked in the Africana studies program. She became an adviser to black student groups.

 About five years ago, she also took guardianship of one of her adoptive siblings, Izaiah, who was then a teenager. “She decided that he was being abused, so she basically showed up and took him, and essentially said if you want him back, you’re going to have to sue,” her uncle said.

 But questions about Ms. Dolezal, if not suspicion that she was not exactly everything she purported to be, were never far away either. In her neighborhood of mostly modest homes south of downtown, one neighbor, Tony Berg, a hydraulics technician who was sitting on his front step with a cigarette on a recent morning across the street from her house, said he saw Ms. Dolezal’s appearance change and at first thought someone else had moved in.

 “She was blond — dreadlocks down to here and white skin,” Mr. Berg said, drawing a line across his waist. “Then a year or two later, I began seeing a darker-skinned woman go into the house. She had changed.”

 Growing Suspicions

 And some of the questions, or doubts, about her racial identity were also being deliberately spread. A columnist at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Shawn Vestal, said that he and other people at the paper were approached by a private investigator in early June, more than a week before the first news reports about Ms. Dolezal’s racial identity.

 “He did have some of the evidence, or said he did, about what her parents would say about her identity,” said Mr. Vestal, who said he had agreed with the investigator that his name would not be made public.

 In the “Today” interview on Tuesday and one that followed on a sister network, MSNBC, Ms. Dolezal, remarkably composed despite harsh criticism aimed at her, stuck to her insistence that racial heredity does not equal identity, and she would not answer questions about whether she had changed her self-identification to merely gain advantage. Mr. Lauer asked if she could have been as successful an activist if she had portrayed herself as white.

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 “I don’t know,” Ms. Dolezal said. “I guess I haven’t had the opportunity to experience that in those shoes, so I’m not sure.” ||||| Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. |||||

– The Rachel Dolezal story got even stranger during an NBC interview last night in which, as Raw Story puts it, she went "full-scale birther" on herself. Asked by Savannah Guthrie whether she thought it was misleading to identify as black, Dolezal responded, "I haven't had a DNA test. There's been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne [Dolezal] are my biological parents." When reminded that her name and their names are on her birth certificate, Dolezal said she couldn't prove they're not her parents, but "I don't know that I can actually prove they are. I mean, the birth certificate is issued a month and a half after I'm born. And certainly there were no medical witnesses to my birth." "I definitely am not white," Dolezal continued. "Nothing about being white describes who I am. The closest thing that I can come to is if—if you're black or white, I'm black. I'm more black than I am white." Dolezal said she hasn't changed her skin color, but she does spray on bronzer some days. It isn't clear whether there were any "medical witnesses" to her birth, or whether she really believes her parents may not be her parents. Dolezal has claimed to have been born in a tepee, but her uncle tells the New York Times that isn't true. "Larry and Ruthanne were kind of the quintessential Jesus people, hippies, back to nature, and they set up a tepee and lived in it for a year," he says. "Drove my parents crazy, but nobody was born in the tepee."


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– President Trump knew that Mike Flynn had misled VP Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador weeks before Pence was informed, it emerged Tuesday as the national security adviser's resignation continued to rock the administration. Pence spokesman Marc Lotter tells the Washington Post that the vice president "became aware of incomplete information" on Feb. 9 following a Post story on the issue. The White House, however, says Trump and other top administration officials were briefed on the Justice Department's concerns about Flynn at least two weeks earlier. "It's not that he was being left out. It was a legal review," an administration source tells CNN. In other developments: The FBI interviewed Flynn in late January after it warned the Trump administration that he could be blackmailed, the New York Times reports. If authorities determine that he lied during that interview, he could face felony charges. In an interview with the Daily Caller hours before his resignation, Flynn insisted there were "no lines crossed" in his conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. "It wasn't about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out," Flynn said, referring to former President Obama's expulsion of Russian diplomats in December. "It was basically, 'Look, I know this happened. We'll review everything.' I never said anything such as, 'We're going to review sanctions,' or anything like that." Legal experts tell Politico that Flynn faces a real risk of prosecution if he wasn't truthful with the FBI, and claiming to have forgotten parts of the conversation probably won't work. Lawyer Mark Zaid says a puzzling aspect of the case is that, as a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn must have known that conversations with ambassadors from countries like Russia would be under surveillance. Republican senators are among those calling for a full investigation of the Flynn affair, but he still has his defenders, including Rush Limbaugh. On Tuesday, the radio host described pressure on Flynn as a "political assassination" by the media, the Hill reports. "They think they have blood in the water, they've got a scalp, and they think they can get another and then another and then another and then another until finally they get Trump," he said. The BBC reports that Pence and other top US officials will be in Europe later this week to reassure American allies—though NATO allies will apparently be untroubled by the departure of Flynn, who was seen as "a bizarre and destabilizing appointment."

WASHINGTON — Just days into his new position as President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn found himself in a meeting that any White House official would dread. Face to face with F.B.I. agents, he was grilled about a phone call he had had with Russia’s ambassador.

 What exactly Mr. Flynn said has not been disclosed, but current and former government officials said on Tuesday that investigators had come away believing that he was not entirely forthcoming. Soon after, the acting attorney general decided to notify the White House, setting in motion a chain of events that cost Mr. Flynn his job and thrust Mr. Trump’s fledgling administration into a fresh crisis.

 Mr. Flynn’s rise and fall followed familiar patterns in Washington, where ambitious figures secure positions of great authority only to lose them in a blizzard of contradictions, recriminations and scandal. But rarely has an official at such a high level risen and fallen in such a dizzyingly short time, in this case just 24 days after Mr. Flynn arrived in the West Wing to take his corner office.

 Given his short stay at the top, Mr. Flynn’s case might be quickly forgotten as an isolated episode if it did not raise other questions, particularly about what the president knew and when. Even more broadly, it underscores lingering uncertainty about the relationship between the Trump administration and Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, a subject of great interest given American intelligence reports of Moscow’s intervention in last year’s elections in the United States. ||||| Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said the media helped force Michael Flynn out of his post as President Trump’s national security adviser.

 “We have a political assassination that’s taken place here,�? he said on his radio show Tuesday while discussing Flynn’s resignation the day before. "The media’s going to try as hard they can not to let go of this, because now they’ve got their scalp."

 “They think they have blood in the water, they’ve got a scalp and they think they can get another and then another and then another and then another until finally they get Trump.�?

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 Limbaugh said extensive news coverage of Flynn’s past phone conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak is the latest evidence the media will constantly impede the Trump administration.

 “They have become the full-fledged resistance to Trump and they have decided that that’s going to be their modus operandi for the next four years,�? he said. "They’re not gonna do the news. They have now mobilized and made it official, they’re even talking about it, some of them are, on [the] cable networks."

 “I mean, they disguise the words they use, but the impact is clear that they are going to do everything they can to get Trump out of Washington and out of the White House and out of office.�?

 Flynn resigned late Monday amid reports he misled senior White House officials about his discussions with Kislyak before Trump entered office.

 The retired Army lieutenant general blamed the “fast pace of events�? for why he “inadvertently�? gave “incomplete information�? to Vice President Mike Pence Michael (Mike) Richard PenceQueen Elizabeth offers condolences to Hurricane Harvey victims Trump proclaims Sunday 'National Day of Prayer' for Harvey victims Pence goes hands-on clearing debris in Texas MORE and others about the talks. He said just before resigning that he spoke with the ambassador specifically about the 35 Russian officials that were expelled from the U.S. as part of the Obama administration's sanctions but that "no lines were crossed."

 Reports emerged last week that Flynn and Kislyak discussed sanctions against Russia during a series of phone calls in December.

 Pence had previously denied Flynn and Kislyak ever spoke about sanctions.

 White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation once the president’s faith in his adviser “eroded�? following the reports. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Is losing a top job in 24 days a record?

 Leading members of the US Republican Party have joined calls for a wide investigation into the former national security adviser's links with Russia.

 Michael Flynn quit on Monday over claims he discussed US sanctions with Russia before Donald Trump took office.

 On Tuesday, a White House spokesman said Mr Trump knew weeks ago there were problems with the Russia phone calls.

 But calls for an independent investigation have encountered a cold response from some senior Republicans.

 The development came as the New York Times reported that phone records and intercepted calls show members of Mr Trump's presidential campaign, as well as other Trump associates, "had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election".

 However, officials spoken to by the newspaper said they had not yet seen evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or to influence the election.

 As well as an FBI investigation, both the Senate and House intelligence committees are already examining Russian involvement in the election. It is not yet clear whether the latest claims will be included in their scope.

 Why Mr Flynn resigned

 He stood down over allegations he discussed US sanctions with a Russian envoy in December, before Mr Trump took office.

 The conversations took place about the time that then-President Barack Obama was imposing retaliatory measures on Russia following reports it attempted to sway the US election in Mr Trump's favour.

 Mr Flynn could have broken a law - known as the Logan Act - by conducting US diplomacy as a private citizen, before he was appointed as national security adviser.

 More on the Flynn scandal

 The retired army lieutenant-general initially denied having discussed sanctions with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Vice-President Mike Pence publicly denied the allegations on his behalf.

 The White House admitted it had been warned about the contacts on 26 January but President Trump initially concluded Mr Flynn had not broken any law.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption White House press secretary Sean Spicer: "What this came down to, was a matter of trust"

 White House lawyers then conducted a review and questioned Mr Flynn before reaching the same conclusion as Mr Trump, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said, but the trust had gone.

 "In the end, it was misleading the vice-president that made the situation unsustainable," White House Counsellor Kellyanne Conway said on Tuesday.

 Mr Flynn was also reportedly questioned by FBI agents in his first days as national security adviser, according to US media.

 What Mr Flynn says

 In an interview conducted with the conservative website The Daily Caller on Monday, but published only on Tuesday, Mr Flynn said he "crossed no lines" in his conversation with the ambassador.

 He said he discussed the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats over alleged hacking ahead of the election, but "it wasn't about sanctions".

 He said he was concerned that the apparently classified information had been leaked. "In some of these cases, you're talking about stuff that's taken off of a classified system and given to a reporter," he said. "That's a crime."

 However, in his resignation letter, Mr Flynn said "the fast pace of events" during the presidential transition meant that he had "inadvertently briefed the vice-president elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador".

 How are Republicans reacting?

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Kellyanne Conway said Gen Flynn either "misled" or "could not completely recall" his conversation

 In his first public comments about the controversy, President Trump tweeted on Tuesday: "The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N Korea etc?"

 US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told reporters on Tuesday he wanted to examine the leaks, and said the FBI should explain why Mr Flynn's conversation had been recorded.

 But the Senate's second-ranking Republican,John Cornyn, and other Republican senators have called for an investigation into Mr Trump's connections with Russian officials.

 Republican John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr Flynn's resignation was a "troubling indication of the dysfunction of the current national security apparatus", which raised questions about Mr Trump's intentions towards Russia.

 Meanwhile, the Senate's most senior Republican, Mitch McConnell, said the intelligence committee was already looking into Russian influence on the election, indicating there was no need for a new investigative panel.

 And Russia?

 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would not be commenting on the resignation.

 "This is the internal affair of the Americans, the internal affair of the Trump administration," he added. "It's nothing to do with us."

 Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Flynn was pictured dining with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in December 2015

 What will America's allies think? - by BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus

 Gen Flynn's resignation comes just as senior US officials are mounting a major effort to reassure uncertain allies in Europe about the Trump administration's intentions.

 The new US Defence Secretary General James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice-President Mike Pence are all in Europe over the coming days. Gen Mattis is in the vanguard - he meets his Nato counterparts in Brussels on Wednesday.

 There will be few tears shed within the alliance over Gen Flynn. His was widely seen as a bizarre and destabilising appointment.

 But his demise and the rumbling row over team Trump's contacts with Russia continues to cause unease at Nato where many governments wonder at the Trump administration's resolve in standing up to what they see as a new assertiveness from Moscow.

 Many key US officials are still to be appointed and the continuing chaos at the heart of the Trump administration is a cause for concern among Nato countries whatever reassurance the heavyweight US diplomatic trio may bring.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The US public has "serious questions" about US-Russia ties, says congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi

 What happens next?

 Democrat Adam Schiff, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has said Mr Flynn's departure will not end questions about contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia. But there are various ways that these questions could be answered.

 Two Democratic members of the House of Representatives have demanded a classified briefing to Congress on Michael Flynn by the justice department and FBI.

 Several House Democrats had already called on Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to launch an investigation into Mr Flynn's ties to Russia.

 More on Trump's first 100 days: ||||| (CNN) The White House struggled Tuesday to answer an avalanche of questions over national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation.

 Flynn was asked to quit Monday after it became public that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about whether he had discussed US sanctions during pre-inauguration phone calls with the Kremlin's man in Washington, Sergey Kislyak.

 In new developments Tuesday, it emerged that President Donald Trump was told on January 26 -- more than two weeks ago -- that the Justice Department had concerns about Flynn's conduct.

 Pence did not find out he had been misled until February 9, according to two administration officials.

 "It's not that he was being left out. It was a legal review," one source said.

 When Pence began his inquiry based on Washington Post reporting , "the timeline moved fast," the source said.

 A subsequent review by White House counsel Donald McGahn found that he had not broken the law in his conversations with the Russian envoy. If Flynn discussed detailed policy with the Russian envoy, he could have theoretically infringed the Logan Act that prevents private citizens negotiating with foreign governments over their disputes with the United States.

 JUST WATCHED Paul Ryan: Trump right to ask Flynn to resign Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Paul Ryan: Trump right to ask Flynn to resign 00:56

 Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said Flynn's resignation was precipitated not by misconduct but by a gradual erosion of the President's confidence in him, including over a "series of other questionable instances."

 "The level of trust between the President and Gen. Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change," Spicer told reporters Tuesday during his daily briefing. "The President was very concerned that Gen. Flynn had misled the vice president and others."

 A senior administration official later told CNN the other "questionable instances" included Flynn's request for a security clearance for his son during the transition. He requested the clearance without telling Pence, who at the time was in charge of the transition.

 Trump's growing skepticism about Flynn, however, did not prevent the national security adviser from spending the weekend before his ouster with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

 Spicer's attempts to put out the firestorm are unlikely to end the saga, not least because several prominent Republicans on Tuesday joined Democrats in calling for congressional probes into Trump's ties to Moscow, an explosive issue given allegations by the US intelligence community that the Kremlin intervened in the presidential election to help him.

 Tuesday's developments also left key questions in the intrigue unanswered -- including why it took Trump more than two weeks to push Flynn out after he learned that his national security adviser had not told the truth to Pence.

 Flynn was eventually asked to resign on a dramatic day of confusion and conflicting messages from the West Wing, hours after the publication of a Washington Post report that revealed the Justice Department's warning to the White House counsel's office.

 Adding to the drama, a White House official said on Tuesday afternoon that the FBI, which is already investigating alleged contacts between Trump surrogates and Russian officials and intermediaries, interviewed Flynn in the early days of the administration about the calls to the Russian ambassador.

 The cloud of suspicion still lingering over the White House due to the Flynn affair comes as the new administration is embroiled in multiple controversies and internal staff are infighting as it struggles to find its feet.

 It also thrusts Trump's relationship and admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin back in the spotlight.

 Many Washington power players have been astonished by the President's frequent defenses of the Russian leader and determination to improve relations with the Kremlin, despite Moscow's turn to Cold War-style confrontational policies in recent years.

 Those questions are prompting Republican senators to get more aggressive in searching for answers, despite some resistance to a wider probe in the House.

 Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was "highly likely" that the chamber's intelligence committee would look at allegations that Flynn spoke about sanctions with Kislyak.

 JUST WATCHED Graham vows fight to last breath for sanctions Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Graham vows fight to last breath for sanctions 01:58

 Sens. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican, Roy Blunt and Lindsey Graham also called for an investigation.

 "I think Congress needs to be informed of what actually Gen. Flynn said to the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions," Graham told CNN's Kate Bolduan on "At This Hour."

 "And I want to know, 'Did General Flynn do this by himself or was he directed by somebody to do it?' " the South Carolina Republican added.

 Democrats on Capitol Hill already smell blood, and are demanding congressional probes.

 "Let's be clear -- right now, there are way more questions than answers on President Trump's relationship with Russia," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, told reporters.

 Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee said, "The American people deserve to know at whose direction Gen. Flynn was acting when he made these calls, and why the White House waited until these reports were public to take action."

 But the President and some House Republicans pushed back, trying to focus attention on the source of disclosures about Flynn's contacts with Russia that appear to have emerged from intelligence surveillance of the Russian Embassy.

 "The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?" Trump tweeted in his first public reaction to Flynn's departure.

 The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2017

 House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes said the focus of any investigation should be how news of Flynn's calls leaked out.

 Democrats and some Republicans are also asking whether Trump instructed Flynn to talk to the Russian ambassador last year about sanctions imposed by the Obama administration to punish alleged Russian interference in the presidential election.

 Russia did not respond in its normally aggressive way to the expulsion of alleged agents from its diplomatic posts in the US and the closure of several compounds allegedly used for espionage activities, leading to suspicion that it believed that the Trump administration would act in a way more conducive to Moscow's position.

 But Spicer insisted Trump had given no instructions to Flynn to talk about sanctions with Russia.

 "Absolutely not, no, no, no," Spicer said.

 Correction: In an earlier version of the story, a reference to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments should have made clear he was talking about allegations surrounding Michael Flynn. ||||| Speaking to reporters, Feb. 14, White House press secretary discussed the events leading up to the resignation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn from the Trump administration. Here are some key moments from that briefing. (Reuters)

 Vice President Pence first learned that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled him about the nature of his contact with a Russian official on Feb. 9, a full two weeks after other White House officials were briefed on the matter, an aide to Pence said on Tuesday.

 The timing indicates that Pence would have become aware of the controversy around the same time that a Washington Post report was published, detailing the degree to which Flynn had been in contact with the Russian ambassador to the United States on the issue of sanctions, Pence spokesman Marc Lotter said.

 “What I would tell you is that the vice president became aware of incomplete information that he had received on Feb. 9, last Thursday night, based on media accounts,” Lotter said. “He did an inquiry based on those media accounts.”

 In a January television interview, Pence said that Flynn had told him the issue of sanctions did not come up in his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

 The revelation adds a new layer to the confusion within the White House as it seeks to explain why it took more than two weeks for Flynn to resign his post, even though senior officials, including the president, were aware that he had not told Pence the truth.

 President Trump had been aware for “weeks” that Flynn had misled Pence and other officials, but did not act until Monday night, forcing the national security adviser to resign, the White House said on Tuesday.

 White House counsel Don McGahn told Trump in a briefing late last month that Flynn, despite his claims to the contrary, had discussed U.S. sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. Trump was briefed “immediately” after the Justice Department informed McGahn about the discrepancy, Spicer told reporters Tuesday.

 Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general at the time, and a senior career national security official at the Justice Department had informed McGahn at his office about their concerns on Jan. 26, according to a person familiar with the briefing. Spicer said the president and a small group of senior aides were briefed by McGahn about Flynn that same day.

 “We've been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to General Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks, trying to ascertain the truth,” Spicer said.

 [Justice Department warned White House that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, officials say]

 The comments contrast with the impression Trump gave Friday aboard Air Force One that he was not familiar with a Washington Post report that revealed that Flynn had not told the truth about the calls.

 “I don't know about that. I haven't seen it. What report is that? I haven't seen that. I'll look into that,” Trump told reporters on the plane.

 Spicer said Tuesday that Trump was responding only to a question about The Post report and was not speaking about the overall issue of Flynn's contact with the Russian ambassador.

 The White House Counsel's Office conducted a “review” of the legal issues and determined that “there was not a legal issue but rather a trust issue,” Spicer said. “The president was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others. The president must have complete and unwavering trust of the person in that position.”

 At the start of the daily White House briefing, Feb. 14, press secretary Sean Spicer spoke about the resignation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. (Reuters)

 [Michael Flynn resigns as national security adviser]

 Spicer said that “the evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of a series of other issues is what led the president to ask for General Flynn's resignation.” He added that the president had an “instinctive” belief that Flynn had not broken any laws, which was later “confirmed” by an inquiry led by the White House Counsel's Office.

 But the scrutiny of Flynn's contacts with Russian officials promises to continue despite his resignation.

 In the first days of the new Trump administration, FBI agents interviewed Flynn about his communications with Kislyak, according to current and former officials.

 The interview, which was first reported by the New York Times, could expose Flynn to possible charges if he denied to the agents, as he had earlier to Pence and other incoming Trump officials, that he had discussed with Kislyak sanctions imposed by the Obama administration for what it said was Russia’s interference in the November elections.

 Lying to the FBI is a felony offense, and the agents were presumably in possession of a transcript of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak when they questioned him.

 In an interview with the Daily Caller, which he granted before his resignation, Flynn said he did not discuss anything inappropriate with the Russian ambassador. “If I did, believe me, the FBI would be down my throat, my clearances would be pulled,” he said. “There were no lines crossed.”

 Flynn told the Daily Caller: “It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out.” He was referring to the expulsion by the Obama administration of 35 Russians it said were intelligence operatives using diplomatic cover.

 “It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything.’ I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that,” Flynn said.

 For Obama officials at the time, even the promise to review the expulsions would have raised a red flag.

 The White House has offered conflicting accounts over the past day about whether Flynn's decision to resign was his own or done at the request of the president, adding to the confusion over how the administration viewed Flynn's actions. Senior officials told reporters Monday night that Flynn offered his resignation voluntarily. And White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on the “Today” show Tuesday morning that Flynn “had resigned” and was not forced to quit.

 “The president is very loyal. He’s a very loyal person,” Conway said. “And by nighttime, Mike Flynn had decided it was best to resign. He knew he became a lightning rod, and he made that decision.”

 Spicer, however, said repeatedly at Tuesday's briefing that Trump asked Flynn to leave.

 Spicer also said that Trump was not concerned with the nature of the conversations that Flynn had with the Russian ambassador but that the lack of trust created an “unsustainable” situation. “The president has no problem with the fact that he acted in accord with what his job was supposed to be,” Spicer said.

 National security officials monitored the calls of the Russian ambassador as part of routine surveillance of foreign officials in the United States. Spicer declined to say whether the president would declassify and release transcripts of Flynn's call with Kislyak.

 “It is inappropriate for me to comment on those at this time,” Spicer said. “It is not an issue that has come up.”

 Ashley Parker contributed to this report. ||||| Legal experts said it is highly unlikely Michael Flynn would ever be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, a 218-year-old criminal law prohibiting private individuals from embarking on negotiations with foreign governments. | Getty Flynn’s statements to FBI under scrutiny

 Just-ousted National Security Adviser Mike Flynn could be in legal trouble if his statements to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. turn out to be inaccurate, lawyers said Tuesday.

 While Flynn has acknowledged “inadvertently” giving “incomplete information” to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, he has been less clear about what account of the episode he gave to the FBI.

 Story Continued Below

 In an interview shortly before Flynn was asked to resign Monday, the retired general said nothing about his late December contact with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak verged into the improper.

 “If I did, believe me, the FBI would be down my throat, my clearances would be pulled. There were no lines crossed,” Flynn told the Daily Caller.

 Legal experts said it is highly unlikely Flynn would ever be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, a 218-year-old criminal law prohibiting private individuals from embarking on negotiations with foreign governments. No one has ever faced such a charge.

 However, Flynn did have a legal obligation to be truthful with the FBI about any contacts with the Russians.

 “He is at serious risk of being prosecuted if he told the FBI what he told the Vice President,” said former Obama White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen, now with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

 “Just because you’re not going to charge him with the Logan Act, there’s certainly nothing to preclude you from going forward under 1001,” said former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg, referring to a U.S. criminal code felony provision prohibiting making knowing and willful false statements “in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States.”

 A genuinely faulty memory is a valid defense to a false statement charge, but Zeidenberg said it’s hard to see how Flynn could have been mistaken under these circumstances.

 “How did his memory go from I didn’t talk to the Russians about sanctions to I don’t remember if I talked to the Russians about the sanctions,” the ex-prosecutor said. “These interview are very close in time to the event, not a year and a half later….It’s not the type of thing that you would forget.”

 White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that White House counsel Don McGahn explored Flynn’s actions and concluded there was no law broken.

 “We had to review whether there was a legal issue, which the White House Counsel concluded there was not,” said Spicer, carefully avoiding any mention of whether McGahn looked at whether any crimes may have been committed.

 Of course, any decision about criminal charges is ultimately made by the Justice Department, not the White House. Spicer said that when acting Attorney General Sally Yates visited McGahn on Jan. 26, she was simply alerting the White House to intelligence about Flynn, not disclosing any investigation.

 “She said, we wanted to give you a head's up that there may be information, okay? She could not confirm there was an investigation,” Spicer said.

 A lawyer who handles security clearance background check disputes for government employees, Mark Zaid, said most misstatements in that context don’t lead to a criminal charge.

 “I’d say 98 out of 100 times, nothing ever happens, not criminally. Maybe there’s an administrative matter with the clearance, but every once in a while the government gets all worked up and all of a sudden somebody gets prosecuted for lying” in a background check, said Zaid.

 One puzzling aspect of Flynn’s case is that as a former Defense Intelligence Agency director and veteran intelligence officer it seems likely he would be aware that conversations with foreign ambassadors of countries seen as hostile to the U.S. are routinely recorded.

 “As a former DIA director, he would know that ambassadors are under surveillance, so presumably he would not say something so stupid that it would get him into trouble,” said Zaid, who is handling Freedom of Information lawsuits for some POLITICO reporters.

 Still, people sometimes act in ways that don’t seem logical in retrospect, Zeidenberg noted.

 “He may not be thinking at that moment that there may be a transcript somewhere that may cross me up. It seems kind of dumb but maybe he didn’t think through the ramifications or implications of what he was saying,” said Zeidenberg, now with law firm Arent Fox.

 False statement charges typically tend to be brought with other more substantive charges, although that is not always the case. Sometimes the false-statement charge is filed as part of a plea bargain that avoids a trial on other, more serious claims.

 That’s what happened last year with Marine Gen. James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He pled guilty to a single false-statement felony charge after getting caught up in an investigation into leaks about U.S. use of the Stuxnet virus to impede Iran’s nuclear program.

 Prosecutors said they agreed to the plea bargain in order to avoid a contested public trial on an Espionage Act charge of transmitting classified information to journalists. President Barack Obama pardoned Cartwright before he was sentenced.

 A special prosecutor investigating the leak of a CIA operative’s identity turned to the false-statement statute and similar laws to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, even though Libby was never charged with leaking. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison after a jury convicted him on four felony counts. President George W. Bush commuted the prison term, but never granted a pardon.

 The FBI has a record of aggressively pursuing false statements by potential appointees for senior jobs, at least in some instances.

 In 1997, former Clinton administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros was indicted in 18 felony counts, including false-statement and obstruction charges, stemming from statements he made to the FBI about payments to a mistress. During an FBI background inquiry, Cisneros acknowledged some payments to the mistress, but understated them and said they had ceased when they had not.

 On the eve of trial in 1999, the independent counsel handling the case and Cisneros entered a plea deal where he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor false statement count. He paid a $10,000 fine, but later received a pardon from Clinton.

 The prosecution was widely criticized as excessive, but FBI officials said it was critical to preserve the integrity of the FBI’s background check process.

 Zeidenberg said he wouldn’t predict a prosecution of Flynn, but he cautioned against ruling it out.

 “I could see a case like that brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C.,” the ex-prosecutor said. “I wouldn’t presume one way or another, but I wouldn’t assume they would never prosecute a case like that.”

 Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

  ||||| In the final hours before his resignation, now-former White House National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn said he “crossed no lines” in his discussion with Russia’s ambassador, but ultimately he was most concerned about the steady stream of leaks to reporters based on classified information.

 “In some of these cases, you’re talking about stuff that’s taken off of a classified system and given to a reporter. That’s a crime,” Flynn told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group during a telephone interview from his White House office on Monday.

 “You call them leaks. It’s a criminal act. This is a crime. It’s not just a wink and a nod,” Flynn said.

 “Over the weekend,” Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reports, Flynn “was instructed not to speak to the press when he was in the fight for his political life. His staff was not even allowed to review the transcripts of his call to the Russian ambassador.”

 On Monday morning, he spoke with TheDCNF at length, saying he was told to “go out and talk more.”

 “He [President Donald Trump] expressed confidence,” Flynn told TheDCNF, just hours before his resignation. “That’s when he told me that we need to go out and talk more. So I’m going to do that.”

 “I haven’t been fighting back because I’m not that kind of guy. I’m behind the scenes. I’ve always been behind the scenes. But this is ridiculous. It’s so out of control. I’ve become an international celebrity for all the wrong reasons.”

 Flynn said he didn’t know where the leaks originated. “One has to wonder, ‘Are they coming out of people in the National Security Council? Are they coming out of people in the intel community? Or State? Or Defense?'”

 The politicization of intelligence and the release of classified information for use against political opponents is likely to spark a fierce firestorm in Washington.

 President Donald Trump tweeted early Tuesday on leaks from officials within his administration, saying, “The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?”

 White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Tuesday that the president “is clearly upset” about leaks and that past leaks affected earlier administrations, including Obama’s.

 “People who are entrusted with national security secrets, classified information, are leaking it out. That’s a real concern for this president,” he said.

 “We have to wonder that people who work for our government, who are entrusted with classified information, decisional-based materials are leaking that information out. That, I do believe is a big story.”

 Spicer did not spell out any steps Trump might take to stem the flow of leaks, however.

 Before his post in the administration, Flynn was in charge of military intelligence in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was appointed to the highest levels within military intelligence, including as director of intelligence for the U.S. Central Command. After that, he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

 President Barack Obama fired him as DIA director in 2014 after Flynn delivered testimony before Congress that was at odds with Obama’s contention that radical Islamic terrorism, including ISIS, was not a major threat. Since then, Obama administration officials have openly held low regard for him.

 Since Trump and Flynn entered the White House, anonymous sources have given select reporters information about telephone intercepts conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).

 The classified information secretly given to reporters purportedly showed that Flynn discussed sanctions on Dec. 29, when 35 Russian diplomats were being expelled that same day by the outgoing Obama administration.

 Other intelligence leaks have revealed Trump’s private discussions with heads of state soon after he became president-elect.

 In a Feb. 9 story, The Washington Post cited unnamed “current and former U.S. officials” who accused Flynn of violating the law in a Dec. 29 telephone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislvak.

 Flynn called the leaks of classified information against government officials “unprecedented,” and predicted those would be the focus of future congressional investigations.

 “Members of Congress are very concerned because these are leaks from classified systems. The House and Senate are looking into those things, as they should,” he told TheDCNF.

 The issue of government leaks is an issue for House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. On Monday, Nunes told Bloomberg News that he views leaks about Flynn’s private conversation as part of a pattern.

 “There does appear to be a well-orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration,” said Nunes, who is a California Republican. “From the leaking of phone calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern.”

 A Wall Street Journal editorial Tuesday asked, “Did U.S. spooks have a court order to listen to his conversations?”

 Former intelligence and military officers told TheDCNF they agree Flynn was the victim of a highly orchestrated “disinformation campaign” generated by current and former intelligence officers, many with loyalties to former President Obama.

 Intelligence officials are supposed to use their expertise in psychological warfare and disinformation campaigns against enemy states, but never against an occupant of the Oval Office.

 “Who pulled the NSA tapes on Mike Flynn?” asked retired Col. James Waurishuk, a 30-year intelligence officer who once served in the National Security Council. “Who compiled it? Who released it?” the retired Special Forces veteran asked in an interview with TheDCNF.

 Waurishuk argued the many leaks meant the public is seeing the politicization of intelligence. “There are those in the intelligence community that are more concerned with their agendas than with national security,” he said.

 “Notice how the intelligence community can leak Flynn’s conversation, but there are no leaks on Hillary Clinton and Benghazi,” he added.

 Another former intelligence official, retired Col. James Williamson, told TheDCNF, “What is illegal is that Flynn has his conversations eavesdropped on. Who at NSA leaked the transcript?”

 Williamson called it an “egregious overstep” by current and former intelligence officials.

 Flynn insisted that he crossed no lines in his telephone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak: “If I did, believe me, the FBI would be down my throat, my clearances would be pulled. There were no lines crossed.”

 Flynn said there was a brief discussion of the 35 Russian diplomats who were being expelled by Obama in retaliation for Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 campaign.

 “It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out,” Flynn said. “So that’s what it turned out to be. It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything.’ I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that.”

 Flynn said he apologized to Vice President Mike Pence about his earlier contention that there were no discussions about the expulsion order, which was part of the Obama sanctions.

 “For the vice president, I feel terrible. I put him in a position. He’s a man of incredible integrity. I think the world of him. He is so good for our country,” he said. “I should have said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t recall,’ which is the truth. Looking back, that’s what I should have done.”

 The December conversation “was not to relieve sanctions. It was basically to say, ‘Look, we’re coming into office in a couple of weeks. Give us some time to take a look at everything.’”

 Before he submitted his resignation, Flynn said the president urged him early Monday morning to speak out more frequently.

 Flynn has been silent since tendering his resignation.

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 Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. |||||


Article:

DETROIT -- Sloppiness. Negligence. Incompetence. Those are the only reasons a grieving couple can think of to explain how their daughter, reported missing in October 2009, ended up buried in an anonymous grave without their knowledge for over six years.

 Rosita Cage-Toaster, who now lives in Atlanta, but at the time was attending University of Detroit Mercy, remembers the call she received nearly eight years ago.

 Detroit police had discovered an abandoned car owned by her daughter, 28-year-old Crissita Elaine Cage-Toaster, on Belle Isle, a large island park east of Downtown Detroit. The young woman's ID, purse and cellphone were inside.

 Rosita Cage-Toaster, 58, and her husband, Johnny Toaster, 64, formally reported their daughter missing Oct. 29, 2009. They gave a detailed description of their adult daughter, including of her distinct tattoos

 "From that day on, I've been searching for her," Cage-Toaster said.

 For years, she periodically called Detroit police investigators hoping for a clue, but nothing turned up.

 Then, on Sept. 29 of this year, Rosita Cage-Toaster received another unforgettable call.

 "It's when we got the news she was deceased, and they actually found the body on March 30, 2010," Cage-Toaster said.

 Their daughter's body was pulled from the Detroit River five months after the initial missing person report, but police and Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office investigators never realized the body was the missing Detroit woman.

 The medical examiner, according to the mother, performed a cursory death investigation, not a full autopsy and tagged her Jane Doe 10-3047. The cause of death has never been determined.

 One major reason the body was never linked to the missing-person report is that both Detroit police, who pulled the body from the river, and the coroner, recorded their daughter as either Caucasian or Hispanic.

 She was black.

 After spending nearly a year in the coroner's cooler, the body was buried in a pine box along with other uncollected or unidentified human remains in an unmarked grave at Knollwood Cemetery in Canton Township.

 There, Crissita Cage-Toaster has remained since March of 2011.

 The county this week notified the parents of plans to exhume their daughter's body. The parents will determine a final resting place of their daughter's remains this week and hold formal memorial service at a Southfield church on Nov. 4.

 'It was a mix-up'

 The parents, though they suspected the worst, never gave up hope their daughter might still be alive. Now they're wondering how the quiet, anonymous burial could have happened, and say they're not getting clear answers.

 "It was a mix-up, they say," said Cage-Toaster, who works at an Atlanta hospital as a nurse unit secretary. "They just say it was a mix-up."

 Her husband, a General Motors retiree, says the Detroit Police Department and Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, which is one of the busiest in the nation, are pointing fingers at each other.

 "Obviously, they did nothing with my daughter," the mother said. "They did no autopsy, nothing. Simple forensics would have told you her ethnicity.

 "The examiner says the Detroit Police Department, they dropped the ball."

 Cage-Toaster called her past attempts to work with Detroit police missing-person detectives a "lost cause."

 "During that time in history, I cannot really account for what may or may not have happened," Detroit Police Lt. Gardner told WXYZ-Channel 7 News, who first reported this story. "But what I can say is that the team we have in place today, they were able to make a turnaround in 24 hours, and they were able to connect the dots."

 Both parents disagree.

 "You didn't do anything," Cage-Toaster said. "If they would have listened me back in 2009, they could have then discovered my daughter."

 She had a tattoo of a large, red rose with the nicknames of each of her parents on her right shoulder, the mother said.

 "I kept telling them to focus on that tattoo," she said. "If they would have first listened to me.

 "That was the key."

 'So many inconsistencies'

 The National Institute of Justice maintains a public database of unidentified remains and missing persons (the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System). The database usually includes details like tattoos that should have signalled a match, based on the description the parents intially reported.

 "There's so many inconsistencies," Cage-Toaster said. "This seems like, to me, you could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle. And they're supposed to be professionals."

 MLive has left mutliple messages with Todd Matthews, who manages the unidentified remains database, attempting to find out when Crissita Cage-Toaster's case was entered and what details it included.

 MLive also posed multiple questions to the Detroit Police Department, and sent a Freedom of Information Act request for autopsy and death records to the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office.

 While Cage-Toaster says representatives from Wayne County Executive Warren Evans' office told her they will pay the exhumation costs, officials refuse to discuss details with MLive, citing privacy concerns.

 Regarding the issues identifiying Crissita Cage-Toaster, Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office spokewoman Lisa Croff, said in an email:

 It was not unnoticed. Ms. Cage's autopsy was performed on March 31, 2010. Her identity was not known. On April 1, 2010, the (Detroit police) filed a standard protocol request for the records. The (medical examiner's office) fulfilled that request providing (Detroit police) the information the (medical examiner) had. After no one claimed her body, she was buried in Canton in March 2011. The (medical examiner) is not the agency that finally made the identification. In 2017, the (Detroit police) notified the (medical examiner's office) that a match had been made and that the body had been ID'd by the parents. The (medical examiner's office) was then able to put a name with a previously unknown case.

 These are the steps the office takes when it receive unidentified remains, according to Croff:

 The body is fingerprinted. If there is a record of those prints, the information is provided by the police department to our investigators for further use in locating and notifying the legal next of kin. If there is no record on file with the police department, then that fact is noted in the case file.

 Medical examiner's office investigators make calls to local police departments for missing person reports that may fit the description of the unknown person.

 Dental impressions and DNA samples are taken and entered into NAMUS for possible matches.

 Investigators use online searches and social media searches in an attempt to find any piece of information that could help ID the body.

 The medical examiner sometimes works with the media to publish information, such as tattoos or other identifying marks, along with details such as where the body was found.

 The University of Michigan Health System, in what was dubbed a $500,000-per-year cost-saving partnership, became the official employer of Wayne County Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Schmidt and his pathologists in 2011. However, Wayne County maintained management control.

 When the contract expired in 2014, it was renewed with additional operational oversight transferred from Wayne County to the University of Michigan. Washtenaw County maintains a similar arrangement with the university.

 'More than meets the eye'

 Following Crissita Cage-Toaster's disappearance, her mother attempted to retrieve her daughter's personal belongings.

 "They wouldn't give it to me when I first reported her missing, because they said it was evidence," she said.

 Now they tell her the items, including a purse, cellphone and other items, can't be found.

 "Everybody is sorry," Cage-Toaster said. "They said it was more than likely thrown away because of the time frame."

 The parents remain dissatisfied with the findings -- or lack of findings -- related to the cause of death, which has been ruled "undetermined."

 "She didn't go to Belle Isle just to jump in some water," Cage-Toaster said. "My husband does believe it was foul play ... I believe there is more to this story than meets the eye."

 According to the national database, there are currently over 14,000 unidentified remains nationwide, 293 in Michigan, including 230 from Wayne County. ||||| DETROIT (WXYZ) - Rosita Cage-Toaster never gave up hope that she'd find her missing daughter. She just never imagined that it would end with such a painful and startling surprise.

 "I never would have thought I'd be living this nightmare. This is hell," she says.

 That nightmare is one that Cage-Toaster has endured for almost 8 years.

 It all started when her 28-year-old daughter Crissita disappeared in Detroit on October 26th, 2009. Her car had been found abandoned near the Belle Isle bridge, with her purse, cell phone and ID still inside.

 The family started putting up missing posters with Crissita's picture. They also filed a police report and told investigators that Crissita had a distinctive rose tattoo.

 Days turned to years, but through it all Cage-Toaster refused to give up on finding her daughter.

 "I knew I had to do my own my work, my own detective work," she says.

 In April, she says she reached out to a national missing persons organization and pleaded for help. She urged them to focus on the fact that Crissita had a distinctive tattoo.

 She told them, "Please focus on the tattoos, one descriptive tattoo was the one with a big rose that said me and my husband's name, our nicknames, Blue and Ro."

 She says that's when they contacted DPD and only then did Detroit Police notice there was indeed a connection between a body found in 2010 and her daughter. It was that unmistakable tattoo.

 urns out, Crissita's body had been found back on March 30th, 2010. That's just 5 months after she'd gone missing. Cage-Toaster was told Crissita had somehow ended up in the Detroit River.

 "I don't want this to happen to nobody, system has to do better," she says.

 So, for almost 8 years, she and her family had no idea that Crissita had been dead. For most of that time, Crissita had been buried at a Canton cemetery, associated only with a number.

 Cage-Toaster says investigators dropped the ball. She says they could have made the tattoo connection right after her daughter's body was found. She also says it was assumed that Crissita wasn't African-American.

 "Someone put down that she was Hispanic or Caucasian. That's what they claim the mix-up was," she says.

 7 Action News went to Detroit Police to try and get some answers.

 Lt. Kenneth Gardner told us, "Her body had been in the river all of that time. The complexion and things of that .. go undergoes a change. It's hard to elaborate on that."

 But there was also that tattoo. Why couldn't that connection have been made years ago?

 "During that time and period in Detroit history, I cannot really account for what may or may not have happened, but what I can say is that the team that we have in place today, they were able to make a turn around in 24 hours and connect the dots," Gardner says.

 Cage-Toaster and her husband say their family would have been spared years of agony had this case been handled the right way.

 "It was rough. It was no easy task going through the 8 years of not knowing where she was," says Johnny Toaster, Crissita's dad.

 "Everybody is 'I'm sorry.. I'm sorry'.. no you're not sorry. You can't feel my pain... You didn't go through what I went through all these years. I don't want to see anybody ever have to go through this," says Rosita Cage-Toaster.

 Crissita's family is hoping to have her body exhumed so they can have a proper burial.

 They also wanted to retrieve her belongings that had been found in her car, but police told them they'd been destroyed.

 The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office tells us they did document Crissita's tattoo in the autopsy report they provided to DPD.

 They also tell us that the appearance of the body gave them no reason to question the ethnicity on the initial report from DPD, which listed her as Caucasian or, possibly, Hispanic.

 Her death was ruled a drowning, circumstances unclear. ||||| DETROIT (AP) — Detroit police recently told the parents of a woman reported missing in 2009 that investigators actually found her body in 2010 and later buried her unidentified remains, blaming the mistake in part on investigative records that wrongly listed her ethnicity.

 The parents of 28-year-old Crissita Cage-Toaster said they gave police a detailed description of their daughter — including of a large rose tattoo on her shoulder that included her parents' nicknames — when they reported her missing in October 2009. Detroit police had discovered the woman's abandoned car, with her purse, ID and cellphone inside, on a large island park east of downtown.

 "From that day on, I've been searching for her," said her mother, Rosita Cage-Toaster. "If they would have listened to me back in 2009, they could have then discovered my daughter."

 Local officials notified her parents this week of plans to exhume the body, which was buried with other unidentified remains at a cemetery west of Detroit about a year after it was discovered. The parents said Detroit police were negligent in their initial investigation.

 Cage-Toaster, who lives in Atlanta, periodically checked in with Detroit detectives in the years after the case went cold. Then in April, she reached out to the National Institute of Justice, which maintains a public database of unidentified remains and missing persons. The database includes details like tattoos.

 Cage-Toaster urged the organization to focus on her daughter's tattoo. She said that's when the organization contacted Detroit police, who later made the connection between a body found in the Detroit River in 2010 and the case of Cage-Toaster's missing daughter.

 Cage-Toaster said Detroit police called her in late September, telling her officers had found her daughter's body about five months after she was reported missing. She said the coroner performed a cursory death investigation, but that a cause of death wasn't determined.

 Police said part of the reason the body wasn't identified was because the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office and Detroit police records listed her ethnicity as Caucasian or Hispanic. She was black.

 "Her body had been in the river all of that time," said Lt. Kenneth Gardner. "The complexion and things of that ... undergoes a change. It's hard to elaborate on that."

 Gardner said it's unclear why police didn't make the connection using the woman's tattoo years ago, but added: "What I can say is that the team we have in place today, they were able to make a turnaround in 24 hours and connect the dots."

 Cage-Toaster said police's explanation doesn't make sense.

 "There's so many inconsistencies," she said. "This seems like, to me, you could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle. And they're supposed to be professionals."

 The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database said there are currently over 14,000 unidentified remains nationwide, nearly 300 of which are in Michigan. |||||
What is a summary?

– Almost eight years after their daughter's car was found abandoned in Detroit, a Georgia couple held out hope that the missing woman would be found alive. It was hope that should've been dashed within months. The body of Crissita Cage-Toaster was pulled from the Detroit River in March 2010, five months after the 28-year-old vanished, per the AP. But though the woman was black, Detroit police and the coroner determined her body belonged to a white or Hispanic woman. It was labeled "Jane Doe 10-3047," held in a coroner's cooler for a year, then buried with other unidentified remains in an unmarked cemetery grave, a cause of death never established, reports MLive. Rosita Cage-Toaster, 58, and her husband, Johnny Toaster, 64, say authorities only informed them of "a mix-up" a month ago, a few months after the couple asked a missing-persons group for help in the case, per WXYZ. Police now say months in the river had affected their daughter's complexion, but the couple wonders how a large tattoo of a red rose on their daughter's right shoulder wasn't a clear giveaway. "I kept telling them to focus on that tattoo," says Cage-Toaster, per MLive. "You could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle." The pair—who say personal items found in their daughter's car were apparently thrown out—say their daughter's body will be exhumed and they'll figure out where they want to bury her. A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday.


News article:

The three Cleveland women rescued from the kidnappings that kept them in captivity for over a decade say they are "happy and safe" as they continue to recover from the harrowing ordeal.

 The attorneys for Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight released a letter on behalf of their clients thanking the public for their encouragement, as well as for respecting their requests for privacy.

 "The outpouring of public support has been nothing short of remarkable," the letter stated.

 "To have complete strangers offer loving support in the form of money, goods and services, reaching out to help like a family member, is appreciated in ways that are impossible to put into words. Amanda, Gina and Michelle, who have asked for nothing, are frankly overwhelmed by it all."

 RELATED: How to Help the Women Rescued in Cleveland Kidnapping

 The women escaped from Ariel Castro's home on May 6.

 A charity established to help the women in the aftermath of the kidnappings has raised more than $650,000. Donations will directly benefit Berry, her daughter, DeJesus, and Knight.

 The letter in full:

 Amanda, Gina & Michelle Offer Thanks to Community

 We are the attorneys who have come together to help Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

 These three brave women have asked us to give this message to everyone who has expressed concern and support.

 Amanda, Gina and Michelle want you to know they are doing well. They are happy and safe and continue to heal, a process that requires time and privacy.

 Since we first spoke publicly on their behalf, it has been wonderful to see that their plea for privacy has been answered and respected. The media has disappeared from their front lawns and their neighborhoods are no longer experiencing traffic jams from news vehicles and curious onlookers. You have no idea how much this means to them and has helped in their recovery process.

 Their first public message included a simple, heartfelt thanks to well-wishers and supporters for "everything you are doing." That "everything" now includes perhaps the greatest gift of all – the space and time to reconnect with their families and recover and rebuild their lives. And so they say again, "Thank you. Thank you so much!"

 We continue to receive numerous generous offers to support Amanda, Gina and Michelle and their families.

 The outpouring of public support has been nothing short of remarkable.

 To have complete strangers offer loving support in the form of money, goods and services, reaching out to help like a family member, is appreciated in ways that are impossible to put into words. Amanda, Gina and Michelle, who have asked for nothing, are frankly overwhelmed by it all.

 You have touched their hearts in ways they will never forget. So again, they collectively say "Thank you. Thank you so much!"

 We understand some people may be confused about the best way to help. We are in direct, private and ongoing conversations with Amanda, Gina and Michelle about many matters, including your generosity.

 While they appreciate the generous offers of goods and services, for now, they are trying to assess what they need today and for years to come. That's why donations to the Cleveland Courage Funds are so welcome.

 We are confident the Cleveland Courage Funds are the legitimate, appropriate and most effective vehicles for this effort. In fact, donations to the Cleveland Courage Funds are already being distributed to the four survivors consistent with the concepts behind the trusts that are being set up. And as soon as the trusts are in place, one-hundred percent of all donations to the Cleveland Courage Funds will go into those trusts.

 Cleveland is known for its generosity. Amanda, Gina, Michelle and Amanda's daughter are indeed grateful for that generosity, as are we.

 Kathy Joseph, Heather Kimmel, Henry Hilow, and James Wooley are attorneys representing the survivors on a pro bono basis. ||||| Cuyahoga County Sheriff deputies sit outside Ariel Castro's home in Cleveland May 10, 2013.

 CLEVELAND More than $800,000 in donations has poured in from around the world to help the three women found a month ago, held captive for a decade in a Cleveland house, officials said on Thursday.

 The case has resulted as well in raising awareness of the plight of missing persons, said Cleveland City Councilwoman Dona Brady.

 "It takes a tragedy sometimes to make things happen," she said. "The police are taking missing persons much more seriously."

 Cleveland police came under fire for not finding Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry sooner.

 On May 6, Berry, 27, was freed along with her 6-year-old daughter by neighbors from a house owned by Ariel Castro.

 Berry had last been seen in 2003, and police say her child was fathered by Castro.

 Cleveland police responded to Berry's 911 call and found DeJesus, 23, and Knight, 32, also in the house. Knight had disappeared in 2002 and DeJesus in 2004.

 Castro, 52, is in jail on an $8 million bond and faces multiple charges of kidnapping and rape.

 Brady and fellow council members Brian Cummins and Matt Zone set up the Cleveland Courage Fund, a tax-free trust for donations for the four victims.

 So far, $825,000 has been collected from around the country and from various foreign countries.

 The victims have started using money from the fund, said Chris Kelly, a co-trustee of the fund.

 Concern also has prompted offers from doctors, dentists and people volunteering the use of vacation homes and cars, he said.

 "The community is acting in a way you would hope they would act," Kelly said.

 Kelly said the trust will be split equally four ways, as agreed upon by the three women.

 The fund is designed to help them in all aspects of their lives, he said.

 "Ten years out of society means not finishing school, no job training and not learning how to drive," he said.

 There also is an attempt to get money for the victims from the state.

 This week, State Rep. John Barnes Jr. of Cleveland introduced a bill that would award $25,000 a year, free medical care and state university tuition to any survivor of abduction held for eight years or more.

 Cleveland police recently deployed a command bus to the city's crime-troubled east and west sides, with officers and FBI agents sent in to follow up tips and answer questions, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Ciaccia.

 The house where the women were held is boarded up and surrounded by a 10-foot-high chain link fence.

 Cummins, who represents the neighborhood, said residents have discussed having the house torn down and planting four oak trees for the child and three women who escaped.

 (Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Bernard Orr) |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A month after three women and a young girl were found captive in a Cleveland home, Reuters checks in on the victims' situation, or at least their financial state. The Cleveland Courage Fund, a tax-free trust set up in their name, has been flooded with donations and now totals $825,000. The victims have begun dipping into the money, which will be split evenly among Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Berry's six-year-old daughter. "The outpouring of public support has been nothing short of remarkable," the victims previously said in a letter via ABC News. "The community is acting in a way you would hope they would act," the fund's co-trustee told Reuters, adding the money will help the women with whatever they need. "Ten years out of society means not finishing school, no job training, and not learning how to drive." It's not only money that's being offered up. Doctors and dentists have volunteered their services, while others have donated the use of vacation homes and cars. Meanwhile, Reuters reports neighborhood residents have talked about tearing down Ariel Castro's now boarded-up house and planting four oak trees in its place.