By Michael A. Memoli and Del Quentin Wilber

Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump knew for three weeks that former national security adviser Michael Flynn misrepresented his contacts with a Russian diplomat before firing him under pressure, the White House acknowledged Tuesday in offering an account of Flynn’s downfall that differed strikingly from what it said a day earlier.

After days of questions about whether Flynn had spoken with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in December about new sanctions implemented by the Obama administration, White House officials said Monday that Trump was “evaluating” the situation. Trump’s review appeared to come to a swift conclusion with the announcement that he had accepted Flynn’s resignation Monday night.

But on Tuesday, the White House said Flynn’s actions had been under internal review for three weeks. And while the White House concluded that Flynn hadn’t acted illegally in phone calls and text messages with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a “trust issue” arose that ultimately led the president to conclude that “he had to make a change,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.

“The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for a Gen. Flynn’s resignation,” Spicer said in his daily media briefing. He didn’t elaborate on the other issues.

The contrasting accounts underscored that Trump’s concern over Flynn appeared to deepen only once his falsehoods became public, and it served to ramp up questions about Russia’s influence on Trump and his administration.

Republican senators called for a full and open investigation into Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak.

“We should look into it exhaustively so that at the end of this process nobody wonders whether there was a stone left unturned, and shouldn’t reach conclusions before you have the information that you need to have to make those conclusions,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the Senate intelligence committee and vice chairman of the Senate Republican conference, told a St. Louis radio station.

Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both longtime skeptics of Trump, joined Blunt in asking that Flynn account for what happened.

“What I’d like to know is, did Gen. Flynn make this phone call by himself, if he was directed, by who?” Graham said.

Graham did not name Trump, and the White House insisted that if Flynn had acted out of line, it was not at Trump’s behest.

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, insisted there would be a full investigation. “Obviously there’s a lot of concerns,” he said after senators convened on the floor for morning votes. “What form that takes, what committee, what individuals are involved, that remains to be seen.”

Democratic lawmakers called for Flynn to testify on the matter; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has pushed for a 9/11-style panel to investigate Russia’s role in the election.

Flynn’s trouble began last month with reports that he had discussed impending U.S. sanctions with Kislyak before Trump took office, a breach of protocol that also raised questions about whether he violated laws banning U.S. citizens from engaging in foreign policy.

Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump officials had backed Flynn, but Flynn’s statement that he and Kislyak did not discuss sanctions was undermined last week by reports that evidence of their talks existed, including transcripts from routine U.S. monitoring of foreign officials’ communications.

The White House moved Tuesday to distance itself from Flynn.

“Misleading the vice president really was the key,” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said on NBC’s “Today” show. “That made the situation unsustainable.”

She tried to portray Trump as divided between his loyalties and the distraction Flynn had become.

“The president’s very loyal. He’s a very loyal person,” Conway said. “(Flynn) knew he had become a lightning rod and he made that decision.”

Trump ignored shouted questions about Flynn at a meeting Tuesday at the White House. His only public response was a tweet questioning why “so many illegal leaks” were made to the news media.

As Trump met with Pence and then Flynn on Monday night before the resignation was announced, The Washington Post first revealed another layer to the saga: Law enforcement and intelligence officials had told the White House weeks ago about evidence contradicting Flynn’s accounts of his calls with Kislyak and that they were concerned he would be susceptible to blackmail by Russia.

The Obama administration had imposed sanctions Dec. 29 to punish Russia for meddling in the U.S. election, but Russia declined to retaliate, sounding alarms for Sally Yates, then the deputy attorney general, and others, according to a former and a current U.S. official. Yates briefly served as acting attorney general under Trump before being fired for refusing to defend in court his temporary bans on entry into the U.S. by refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Intelligence officials began searching databases and found logs of calls between Kislyak and Flynn. They obtained transcripts of the secretly recorded phone calls and realized that Flynn and the ambassador had discussed the sanctions, the officials said. The officials declined to provide details about the discussions.

Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador emerged in news reports in mid-January, before Trump’s inauguration. His transition team denied that sanctions were discussed in the calls, and Pence told CBS News that the timing of Flynn’s call with the ambassador, as sanctions were announced, was “entirely coincidental.”

Yates and Obama administration intelligence officials grew anxious because Pence’s statement introduced the possibility that Flynn had lied to him. If so, Flynn might vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians who could threaten to expose him, said the former official.

Yates and other Obama administration officials discussed whether to alert Trump but decided against it to preserve the FBI’s broader investigation of potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The officials declined to discuss the nature of that investigation.

Then, on Jan. 23, Spicer again claimed sanctions were not discussed, again astonishing Yates.

After discussing the matter with U.S. law enforcement officials, Yates felt she had to alert the White House because the risks of blackmail were too great and Flynn was in potential violation of the Logan Act, a never-used law from 1799 that bars citizens from negotiating with other governments.

Yates approached White House counsel Donald McGahn and alerted him to the transcripts and discussion of sanctions. It is not clear what McGahn did with the information.

Flynn’s resignation “raises further questions about the Trump administration’s intentions” toward Russia, McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday, calling it “a troubling indication of the dysfunction of the current national security apparatus.”

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., said the White House made the right decision in asking for Flynn’s resignation — which the White House maintained was not the case — as he sidestepped calls for an independent probe.

“The administration will explain the circumstances that led to this,” he told reporters Tuesday at the Capitol.

Trump named retired Army Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as a campaign adviser, as acting national security adviser, and a senior administration official said he was under consideration to be the permanent replacement. Trump is also considering retired Vice Adm. Bob Harward and retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus for the post.