New questions arise
Reports say White House officials secretly gave material to House intelligence chairman
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is facing new questions about political interference in the investigations into Russian election meddling following reports that White House officials secretly funneled material to the chairman of the House intelligence committee.
Trying to fend off the growing criticism, Trump’s top lawyer invited lawmakers from both parties to view classified information at the White House. Thursday’s invitation came as The New York
Times reported that two White House officials — including an aide whose job was recently saved by Trump — secretly helped House intelligence committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes examine intelligence information there last week.
Nunes is leading one of three investigations into Russia’s attempt to influence the campaign and Trump associates’ possible involvement. The Senate intelligence committee, which has thus far taken a strikingly more measured and bipartisan approach to its own Russia probe, tried to keep its distance from the White House and asked that the documents uncovered by Trump aides be given to lawmakers via the appropriate agencies.
The cloud of investigation has hung over Trump’s White House since the day he took office. On Thursday, an attorney for Michael Flynn, Trump’s ex-national security adviser, said Flynn is in discussions with the congressional committees about speaking to them in exchange for immunity.
“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, said in a statement.
Other Trump associates have volunteered to speak with investigators, but have not publicly raised the issue of immunity.
Flynn, a member of the Trump campaign and transition team, was fired as national security adviser after it was publicly disclosed that he misled Vice-President Mike Pence about a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Flynn’s ties to Russia have been scrutinized by the FBI and are under investigation by the House and Senate intelligence panels.
The House committee’s work has been deeply, and perhaps irreparably, undermined by Nunes’ apparent co-ordination with the White House.
He told reporters last week that he had seen troubling information about the improper distribution of Trump associates’ intercepted communications, and he briefed the president on the material, all before informing Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat.
Speaking on Capitol Hill Thursday, Schiff said he was “more than willing” to accept the White House offer to view new information. But he raised concerns that Trump officials may have used Nunes to “launder information to our committee to avoid the true source.”
“The White House has a lot of questions to answer,” he declared.
Instead, the White House continued to sidestep queries about its role in showing Nunes classified information that appears to have included transcripts of foreign officials discussing Trump’s transition to the presidency, according to current and former U.S. officials. Intelligence agencies routinely monitor the communications of foreign officials living in the U.S., though the identities of Americans swept up in that collection is supposed to be protected.
In Washington early last week, White House officials privately encouraged reporters to look into whether information about Trump associates had been improperly revealed in the intelligence gathering process. Days later, Nunes announced that he had evidence, via an unidentified source, showing that Trump and his aides’ communications had been collected through legal means but then “widely disseminated” throughout government agencies. He said the collections were not related to the Russia investigation.
The Times reported that Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the White House National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a White House lawyer who previously worked on the House intelligence committee, played roles in helping Nunes view the materials.
Cohen-Watnick is among about a dozen White House officials who would have access to the types of classified information Nunes says he viewed, according to current and former U.S. officials. He’s become a controversial figure in intelligence circles, but Trump decided to keep him on over the objections of the CIA and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, according to the officials. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly by name.
Cohen-Watnick and Nunes both served on the Trump transition team.
Nunes has repeatedly sidestepped questions about who provided him the intelligence reports, though he pointedly has not denied that his sources were in the White House.