Spicer Scolds Jon Karl: Your Question Assumes a ‘Lot of Things that Are Not True’

EXCERPT:

KARL: "Why would the president if he was notified 17 days ago that Flynn had misled the vice president and other officials here and that he was a potential threat to blackmail by the Russians, why would he be kept on for almost three weeks?" 
SPICER: "Well that's not -- that's -- that assumes a lot of things that are not true. The president was informed of this. He asked the White House counsel to review the situation. The first matter was whether there is a legal issue. We had to review whether there was a legal issue which the White House counsel concluded there was not. As I stated in my comments, this was an act of trust. Whether or not he actually misled the vice president was the issue and that was ultimately led to the president asking for and accepting the resignation of General Flynn. That's it. Pure and simple, it was a matter of trust. We went through a very deliberative process, a very thorough review. The first part of it was clearly to understand the legal aspect of this and that was simply concluded. There was no legal aspect. And then what happened is that the president evaluated the trust aspect of it."