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Experts have raised the possibility that Flynn may have violated the obscure Logan Act, which bars private citizens from interfering in foreign relations. And on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans on the Hill began questioning whether anyone else, including Trump, knew what Flynn was doing.Spicer denied that Trump ever asked Flynn to discuss the sanctions.But he insisted Trump had no problem with Flynn talking to Russian officials.

I cant state it clearly enough: There was nothing in what Gen. Flynn did in terms of conducting himself that was an issue, Spicer said, adding that the White House counsel agreed with this assessment.

Instead, what bothered the president, according to Spicer, was that Flynn told Vice President Mike Pence that he never discussed sanctions and Pence subsequently went on television and said so, repeating Flynns lie.

The Washington Post reported that the Department of Justice first informed the administration last month that it believed Flynn had misled the administration when he said he had not discussed sanctions during the late December call. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates also said she believed Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail from the Russians because of the information he was hiding. Trump later fired Yates because she refused to defend his ban on refugees and travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries.

NBC reported Tuesday that Pence didnt learn about the Justice Departments concerns about Flynn until Feb. 9, 11 days after Trump and other White House officials heard about them.

That was the same day that the Washington Post first reported and made public the fact that Flynn had discussed sanctions.

Spicer continued to say no conversations with Russian officials took place during the campaign despite reports that members of Trumps team did so and wouldnt say whether the White House would declassify the transcripts of Flynns calls about the sanctions.

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Donald Trump Had 'No Problem' With Michael Flynn Talking To The Russians - Huffington Post

President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order to advance construction of the Keystone XL pipeline at the White House on Jan. 24. Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Here's an updated overview of each of Trump's orders:

Executive Order Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Hours after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order aimed at reversing the Affordable Care Act Obama's landmark legislation which Republicans vowed to "repeal and replace" throughout the campaign.

The executive order states that the Trump administration will "seek prompt repeal" of the law. To minimize the "economic burden" of Obamacare, the order instructs the secretary of health and human services and other agency heads to "waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation" of any part of the law that places a fiscal burden on the government, businesses or individuals.

Also in the order are directions to give states more control over implementing health-care laws.

Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High-Priority Infrastructure Projects

The order outlines how the administration will expedite environmental reviews and approval of "high priority" infrastructure projects, such as repairs to bridges, airports and highways.

The order directs the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), within 30 days of a request, to determine a project's environmental impact and decide whether it is "high priority." Project review deadlines are to be put in place by the CEQ's chairman.

The order is widely believed to have been issued in response to the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States

The order outlines changes to a few immigration policies, but most notably it strips federal grant money to so-called sanctuary cities.

In addition, the secretary of homeland security is ordered to hire 10,000 more immigration officers, create a publicly available weekly list of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and review previous immigration policies.

The order also creates an office to assist the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and calls on local and state police to detain or apprehend people in the United States illegally.

Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements

The order is aimed at fulfilling one of Trump's key campaign promises enhancing border security by directing federal funding to construction of a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border. It instructs the secretary of homeland security to prepare congressional budget requests for the wall and to "end the abuse of parole and asylum provisions" that complicate the removal of undocumented immigrants.

Other parts of the order call for hiring 5,000 more Border Patrol agents, building facilities to hold undocumented immigrants near the Mexican border and ending "catch-and-release" protocols, in which immigrants in the United States without documentation are not detained while they await court hearings.

Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States

The order suspends the entry of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somolia for 90 days and stops all refugees from entering the country for 120 days. Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. During the time of the ban, the secretary of homeland security and the secretary of state will review and revise the refugee admission process.

Also in the order is the suspension of Obama's 2012 Visa Interview Waiver Program, which allowed frequent U.S. tourists to bypass the visa interview process.

White House officials have made a number of contradictory statements, at times calling the order a "ban" and at other times referring to it as a "travel restriction." After the order was signed, thousands of protesters popped up at airports across the country to denounce it.

Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees

This order stops all executive branch officials from lobbying for five years after they leave office and places a lifetime ban on lobbying a foreign government.

The order enacts a number of other lobbying restrictions, including, banning appointees from accepting gifts from registered lobbyists and banning appointees who were lobbyists from participating in any issues they petitioned for within the last two years.

Some raised concerns over how Trump will

Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs

The order states that executive departments and agencies must slash two regulations for every one new regulation proposed. Regulation spending cannot exceed $0, and any costs associated with regulations must be offset with eliminations.

The order also directs the head of each agency to keep records of the cost savings, to be sent to the president.

Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System

The order lays the administration's "Core Principles" regarding the U.S. financial system, which includes:

The order directs the treasury secretary to review financial regulations and report back to the president 120 days later with a determination of whether current policies promote the "Core Principles."

Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety

The order directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to create a task force that would propose new legislation to reduce crime, highlighting drug trafficking, illegal immigration and violent crime. The task force will submit yearly reports to the president.

Throughout the campaign, Trump promised voters a return to "law and order" in the United States and said minorities from inner cities are

Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers

The order calls on the Justice Department to "enhance the protection and safety" of law enforcement by increasing penalties for crimes committed against officers.

The attorney general is also instructed to review and determine whether existing federal laws adequately protect law enforcement and later to propose legislation to better protect officers. The order directs the Justice Department to recommend changes in federal grant funding to law enforcement programs if they do not protect officers.

Enforcing Federal Law With Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking

The order outlines the administration's approach to cutting down on organized crime including gangs, cartels and racketeering organizations by enhancing cooperation with foreign governments and the ways in which federal agencies share information and data.

It identifies human trafficking, drug smuggling, financial crimes, cyber-crime and corruption as "a threat to public safety and national security."

The Threat Mitigation National Intelligence of which Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and the secretary of homeland security are co-chairmen will review and recommend changes to federal agencies' practices in a report to be delivered to the president within 120 days.

Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice

Two weeks after Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, this order changes the order of succession for Sessions, who won approval as attorney general last week. The sequence is: the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

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Here's the Full List of Donald Trump's Executive Orders - NBCNews.com

A woman holds up her cellphone before a rally with then presidential candidate Donald Trump in Bedford, N.H., in September. John Locher/AP hide caption

A woman holds up her cellphone before a rally with then presidential candidate Donald Trump in Bedford, N.H., in September.

During his campaign and now as president, Donald Trump has made Twitter part of the daily news cycle, with a single early-morning or late-night Trump tweet setting the news agenda for hours, if not days.

But Trump's use of Twitter hasn't really helped the company's bottom line, or drastically increased user numbers. That might be in large part because you can find out what President Trump is tweeting without having to actually be on Twitter. If you just wait long enough, cable news channels, other social media platforms like Facebook, and even news organizations like the one you're reading now, will tell you everything Trump has tweeted.

But Debra Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer, says this kind of problem is not new for Twitter. "For as long as Twitter's been in existence, it's had far more popular awareness than it's had actual users," she says. "Everybody knows what Twitter is. But not that many people use Twitter. And they've been fighting that perception, which has turned mostly into a reality over the past few years."

(Twitter has around 67 million monthly active users in the U.S. By comparison, Facebook has over 191 million.)

There's another problem facing Twitter that might be more closely tied to Trump: abuse and harassment on the platform. Many advertisers are reluctant to run ads on a space that is full of some very nasty and politically charged discourse.

"When you think about advertisers, they want to be in a nice, well-lit, pleasant place," Williamson says. "And if the commentary on Twitter is negative or abusive, then that just gives advertisers a very easy reason to not want to advertise there."

And this problem has also kept companies like Disney from buying Twitter, according to Bloomberg. You could make the case very easily that Trump has contributed at least a bit to that kind of environment.

"It's my view that having Trump on the platform [Twitter], tweeting as he is, would probably be an incremental negative," says Richard Kramer, a senior analyst at Arete, an equity research firm. "It's fitting a long-term pattern on Twitter, in that the content of the platform often strays into abusive language, and is not what you would call in the advertising community, 'brand safe.' "

Make Twitter nice again?

Last week, Twitter announced some changes to fight harassment on the platform. The company said it would take more steps to keep people who have been singled out for harassing before from making new accounts. Twitter also said it will make its searches, "safer" and take out sensitive content, as well as hiding tweets Twitter has deemed abusive or "low quality."

But several experts who spoke with NPR said to really stop harassment, Twitter needs to authenticate every user make them say who they are and show their faces and their names.

The question facing Twitter now is how to thrive in its current environment one dominated by Trump, who is in almost equal parts a source of opportunity and strife for the social media platform.

Michael Pachter, a research analyst with Wedbush Securities, thinks Twitter should lean into Trump, and use him to its advantage. "They should cast themselves as a news organization without reporters," Pachter told NPR. "Trump is making news by posting on Twitter."

That strategy of bringing new users to Twitter, by emphasizing that users can see the news happen in real-time and framing Twitter as a news service might not be the most profitable. Lots of newsrooms throughout the world don't turn a profit at all.

But Pachter also says the company should do a better job of monetizing Trump's already solid base of followers on the platform, whether or not the company can bring in many more new users. "He [Trump] has 24 million followers," Pachter said. "Imagine advertising to them."

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Is Donald Trump Helping Or Hurting Twitter? - NPR

The Nation.

Donald Trump Has Pulled an Epic Bait-and-Switch The Nation. Compared to Donald Trump's big lie, however, these are mere peccadilloes. As Stephen Mnuchin's confirmation as Treasury secretary confirms, the big lie is Trump's campaign promise to clean out the corrupt political establishment and to put the ... and more »

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Donald Trump Has Pulled an Epic Bait-and-Switch - The Nation.

President Donald Trumps attack on the federal judiciary last week came off to many as just the latest in his pattern of insults du jour, lobbed against anyone daring to defy the White Houses designs. The outcry, from congressional Democrats, law professors, and even, if Sen. Richard Blumenthal is to be believed, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, was predictable. Gorsuch reportedly called the presidents remarks demoralizing and disheartening.

Underlying the ritual furor, though, is a set of deeper concerns. Constitutional experts worry that the presidents comments reveal an authoritarian chief executive who may prove unwilling to be checked or balanced by the judiciary. By scorning norms of comity and respect for a coequal branch of government, Trumps comments also strike at the bedrock of Americas global leadership, which is grounded in the rule of law. By disrespecting the court and spurning the authoritativeness of judicial interpretations of the U.S. Constitution, Trump has cast doubt on whether he will willingly submit to limitations on his power. For a nation that since World War II has argued that power should always be conferred and confined by law, Trumps latest remarks are damaging not just at home but around the world.

The president has said the following about the courts and judiciary over the last week in the context of two unfavorable rulings on his immigration ban: He called Seattle-based District Judge James Robart a so-called judge and dubbed his opinion in the immigration case ridiculous. He then tweeted that the judges terrible decision would be to blame if very bad and dangerous people poured into the country. He commented that even a bad high school student would understand that he, Trump, has the authority to limit entry to the United States. And ahead of a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, he remarked: If the U.S. does not win this case as it so obviously should, we can never have the security and safety to which we are entitled. Politics! The president called the 9th Circuits judicial proceedings disgraceful and described the courts as so political. In the wake of his insults, threats from Trump supporters directed at the judges involved in the case have led federal authorities to provide them with round-the-clock security protection.

Insulting courts is not the same as dissing, say, Nordstrom, Chicago, Mexico, BuzzFeed, the New York Times, or CNN. No matter how ill-considered and damaging, those aspersions are unquestionably protected by the First Amendment and comparable international legal protections. But the law treats certain types of invective toward the judiciary differently, recognizing that speech can dangerously undermine a branch of government whose authority vests in proceedings, opinions, and orders rather than in force. The judiciary can overturn the actions of Congress or the president yet must rely on enforcement powers controlled by the other branches to put its judgments into effect. That intricate interdependence is at the core of the rule of law, and the system has laws in place to insulate against efforts to subvert it.

In the United States, insult and defiance toward the court are addressed by laws of contempt, which can punish disrespectful and insulting comments made in a courtroom setting. The American Bar Association (ABA) has defined criminal contempt to include any conduct, verbal or non-verbal, that embarrasses or obstructs the court, derogates from the courts authority or dignity, [or] brings the administration of justice into disrepute. While the First Amendment has led U.S. courts to be more circumspect than those in Europe about punishing contempt of court that occurs out of a judges earshot, that, too, may qualify as contempt depending on the circumstances. Just last month, a New Orleans prosecutor was brought up on contempt charges for insolent, inappropriate and disrespectful text messages directed toward a judge. While no one has dared propose that Trump be held in contempt, were he not the president of the United States it is conceivable that one of the judges whom he has insulted could pursue a contempt order, which can lead to fines or jail time, in response to his statements indeed, experts have begun to debate whether and how a court judgment might be enforced against him. (Though of course, when contempt occurs out of earshot of the court, the accused is entitled to notice and a chance to defend himself.)

Around the world, attacks by political leaders against the judiciary are treated as a serious incursion on the rule of law and a reflection of weakness in democratic systems. In 2015, South Africas chief justice, Mogoeng Mogoeng, took the matter head on, scheduling a meeting with President Jacob Zuma to discuss attacks by top African National Congress officials accusing provincial courts of being biased against the government and taking bribes. We want to meet with President Jacob Zuma over unfair attacks on the courts. Judges are open to criticism, but it should be fair, specific. General, gratuitous criticism is unacceptable, he stressed. Just last month, the prime minister of Guyana, Moses Nagamootoo, publicly scolded his own attorney general and minister of legal affairs for attacking the judiciary over a pending case testing presidential term limits, saying: Our government does not encourage attacks on the legislature and the judiciary. It is not governments policy or decision to besmirch the character of any judicial officer. Of note, in both cases the criticisms against the judiciary came from lower-ranked officials, making it possible for the head of state to step in and reject them. Not so when it comes to President Trump.

Trumps comments have not gone unnoticed around the world. The chair of Irelands bar council dubbed them sinister, commenting that we have an executive head of state attacking judges who are required to act independently without fear or favor because he disagrees with their interpretation of the law. Martin Solc, the president of the International Bar Association, representing 190 bar associations in 160 countries, said: The rule of law, the centuries-old legal principle that law should govern a nation, is something that is being chipped away at each time President Trump publicly attacks and disrespects a judge. It damages public confidence in the judicial system.

For the U.S. president to be accused on the international stage of so brazenly undercutting the rule of law threatens the countrys credibility as a promoter of legal norms around the world. In 2006, the ABA launched its World Justice Project, aiming to establish a broadly accepted definition for the rule of law globally. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have invested billions of dollars to strengthen the rule of law around the world, including more than $1 billion to build the judicial, corrections, and legal systems in Afghanistan. The premise behind these investments is that rule of law is the best defense to prevent countries from descending into bloodshed and corruption. Embassies around the world have rule of law advisors who work to build the legitimacy and expertise of local lawyers, judges, and lawmakers. All of this effort rests on the notion that, despite serious flaws, the American system of government and legal rule is among the worlds strongest and most stable. Whether American advisors can still, with a straight face, counsel international counterparts on respect for the judiciary in the face of Trumps remarks remains to be seen.

Rule of law as an underpinning of American power globally goes beyond international development, human rights, or nation-building efforts. Allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere want the friendship and protection of a powerful Washington because they trust the United States to uphold international norms that preserve their sovereignty and autonomy. The same cannot be said of Russia and China, whose assertions of power are generally greeted more warily. If the United States can no longer be trusted to be rule-bound at home, others will expect the same to be true abroad. Trumps comments about dismissing treaties and international instruments compound the problem.

The premise of rule of law is that rules and their means of enforcement must be stronger than the ability of any single individual, even a head of state, to thwart them. Rule of law was designed precisely to deal with the problem of Donald Trump: a ruler who would arrogate to himself an unfettered ability to remake society according to his will. The decision rendered by the 9th Circuit thus provides an important measure of assurance. At least for now Trump is being checked, like it or not.

But rule of law is not inviolable. If Trump can convince a significant portion of Americans that judges and the law dont merit respect, courts will find it harder to stop him. Already some customs officers have reportedly defied court orders in implementing the immigration ban. It is essential that standard-bearers for the rule of law unite and visibly resist the presidents incursions on the legitimacy of the judiciary.

The most worrying silence has come from those members of Congress who have failed to forcefully defend a coequal branch of government. This is both morally and strategically shortsighted. For now the president is going after the courts; but attacks on the credibility of Congress cannot be far behind.

For its part, the ABA, after a rocky start that involved pulling a report that warned of Trumps potential to become a libel bully, is beginning to find its voice in the Trump era. While the associations president criticized Trumps remarks about Judge Robart, the body should go further in uniting the legal profession across party lines to condemn attacks on judges and courts. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts serves as chairman of the Judicial Conference, a highly influential body charged with promoting the role and needs of the federal judiciary. The Judicial Conference has in the past addressed attacks on judges and the need for security.

While avoiding partisanship, Roberts, in his role as chief justice, should use his authority to condemn statements and attitudes that threaten the legal system he oversees. His predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, did just that in 1996 when both the White House and Sen. Bob Dole suggested that a federal trial judge be impeached for leniency on drug cases. In a speech at American University, Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered a stirring defense of judicial independence that silenced talk of retaliation against the judge.

The U.S. system of rule of law is being shock-tested by a president who does not believe the rules should apply to him. It falls to Congress, the legal profession, and the judiciary itself to prove that our system of government is stronger than the will of any one man. If that doesnt prove true here in the United States, its hard to imagine it will continue to mean anything anywhere else.

Photo credit:CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images

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Donald Trump Has Put America in Legal Hell - Foreign Policy (blog)