The Week

• Honestly, we do kind of wonder whether he told Flynn, “You’re fired!”

• National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was ousted. He had told Vice President Mike Pence that he hadn’t discussed anti-Russian sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016, when President Obama imposed them. Pence had defended him based on that assurance. Then unnamed members of the intelligence community reported that Flynn had indeed discussed the sanctions. Flynn apologized to Pence and to President Trump before leaving his job after less than a month. Should Flynn have talked to Kislyak? Democrats invoked the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens to negotiate with foreign powers, but how can an incoming administration signal its intentions except by the use of intermediaries? Why did the American intelligence community leak on Flynn? Because they hated him, evidently; but who will say anything to anyone if our own spooks routinely leak it? Should Flynn have misled the vice president? No (Flynn claims a faulty memory). It was the public revelation of the erroneous account that brought him down. With Congress promising investigations of Russia’s role in the election and Democrats, the media, and bureaucrats ready to form a hanging party, we are closer to the beginning of this story than the end.