 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. 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. 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. “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. “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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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 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." It was basically to say, ‘Look, we’re coming into office in a couple of weeks. “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. 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. “It is inappropriate for me to comment on those at this time,” Spicer said.
– 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."