“Two days after firing Michael Flynn as his national security adviser in February, President Trump told several aides and friends he should have kept him instead,” Politico reports.

Said one: “I was kind of stunned. I asked him. You fired him already. What are you going to do?”

“It has left White House officials and outside advisers perplexed: Why is Trump so determined to defend a man at the center of a federal investigation that is damaging his administration, and a man he has accused of lying to his vice president?”

“Trump doesn’t just hope that Flynn will beat the rap. Several sources close to Flynn and to the administration tell the Daily Beast that Trump has expressed his hopes that a resolution of the FBI’s investigation in Flynn’s favor might allow Flynn to rejoin the White House in some capacity—a scenario some of Trump’s closest advisers in and outside the West Wing have assured him absolutely should not happen.”

“The top Republican on the Senate intelligence panel says Michael Flynn’s lawyers say he will not honor the committee’s subpoena for documents,” the AP reports.

“The Senate intelligence committee subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for documents related to the panel’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling.”

“Late last month, fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — under investigation by federal prosecutors, with his lawyer seeking immunity for him to testify to Congress — met with a small group of loyalists at a restaurant in the northern Virginia suburbs,” Yahoo News reports.

“Saddled with steep legal bills, Flynn wanted to reconnect with old friends and talk about potential future business opportunities. But one overriding question among those present were his views on the president who had fired him as national security advisor.”

“Flynn left little doubt about the answer. Not only did he remain loyal to President Trump, he indicated he and the president were still in communication. ‘I just got a message from the president to stay strong,’ Flynn said after the meal was over, according to two sources who are close to Flynn and are familiar with the conversation, which took place on April 25.”

President Trump asked the FBI director James Comey “to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February,” the New York Times reports.

Said Trump, according to the memo: “I hope you can let this go.”

“The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and FBI investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.”

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the U.S. Senate that in the first days of the Trump administration, she told the White House counsel that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to Russian blackmail, the New York Times reports.

Said Yates: “General Flynn was compromised in regard to the Russians.”

“On the eve of Sally Yates’ testimony before the Senate on her warnings about Mike Flynn, the President wants any of his staff who’ve been feeding negative lines about Flynn to the media to stop immediately,” Axios reports.

“White House officials have been eager to throw the former national security advisor under the bus, but a source familiar with the President’s thinking says he still thinks highly of Flynn and has never authorized any of his staff to undermine the general.”

Ryan Lizza talked to a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee:

I asked the Republican congressman if he believed that Flynn did anything illegal in the phone call, in which Flynn discussed actions taken the same day by the Obama Administration. A rarely enforced eighteenth-century law known as the Logan Act makes it illegal to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” or “defeat the measures of the United States” in disputes with an adversary. “That’s open to question,” the Republican congressman told me.

The Hill: 5 questions investigators want to ask Micheal Flynn.