QUID PRO QUO, CLARICE:

 Michael Flynn was looking for a criminal defense attorney -- on the internet.

The sun had set and much of the White House staff had cleared out for the night. Nearly alone, Flynn hovered over his assistant who was seated at her desk just outside his corner office, scanning attorney biographies on her computer screen.

He hadn't told the president or his top advisers what prompted the Google search: Two FBI agents had interviewed him that afternoon about his contacts with Russia.

It was Flynn's fifth day as President Donald Trump's national security adviser. On Feb. 13, 2017, the 25th day of the Trump presidency, Flynn would be gone, fired for lying to the vice president and the FBI. [...]

[A] comprehensive examination of his time as Trump's national security adviser, including interviews with more than 20 people who were directly involved in uncovering or covering up his actions, suggests that Flynn knowingly misled investigators and the president's inner circle repeatedly. Once considered one of the country's top intelligence officials and skilled in deception, Flynn not only concealed key details of his conversations with Vladimir Putin's handpicked ambassador in Washington, but also an investigation he knew was closing in on him.

By the end of the first week of Trump's presidency, as the new administration plunged itself into foreign and domestic turmoil, a small group of senior White House officials had been repeatedly confronted with the truth about Flynn's conversations with Russia's ambassador, Sergey Kislyak - that they had discussed newly-imposed U.S. sanctions against Moscow. They also learned that two FBI agents had questioned Flynn about those conversations in a secure conference room just a short walk from the Oval Office, and that he'd answered with a false account similar to the one he'd given Pence.

"Everyone's forgetting that Flynn was fired because he was lying to everyone," one senior White House official directly involved with the Flynn matter said recently. "After weeks of asking him, he was still saying he never talked to the Russian ambassador about sanctions."

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