Donald Trump aide fired over Pizzagate

Washington: President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday fired one of his transition team’s staff members, Michael G. Flynn, the son of Mr Trump’s choice for national security adviser, for using Twitter to spread a fake news story about Hillary Clinton that led to an armed confrontation in a pizza restaurant in Washington.

The uproar over Flynn’s Twitter post cast a harsh spotlight on the views that he and his father, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, aired on social media throughout the presidential campaign. Both men have shared fake news stories alleging that Ms Clinton committed felonies, and have posted their own Twitter messages that at times have crossed into Islamophobia.

But their social media musings apparently attracted little attention from Mr Trump or his transition team before a North Carolina man fired a rifle on Sunday inside Comet Ping Pong, which was the subject of false stories tying it and the Clinton campaign to a child sex trafficking ring. Hours after the episode, the younger Flynn, 33, went on Twitter to say that until “Pizzagate” was proved false, it remained a story.

On Tuesday morning, after the post had attracted national attention and it was reported that Flynn had a transition team email address, Vice President-elect Mike Pence denied that Flynn had ever worked for the team, saying on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he had “no involvement in the transition whatsoever.” But later, Jason Miller, a transition spokesman, tacitly acknowledged that Flynn had worked for the transition, and said  that he was now no longer involve. The move may have cost the younger Flynn an eventual post in the White House. He had planned to join his father on the staff of the National Security Council.

— By arrangement with the New York Times