President sought aid with FBI inquiry
Flynn won’t comply with panel’s subpoena
President Donald Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.
Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.
Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.
Meanwhile, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, will not comply with a
Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena for documents related to its probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, invoking the Fifth Amendment and his right against self-incrimination.
Flynn’s decision, which his attorneys announced in a letter sent Monday to committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., comes as evidence continues to mount elsewhere in Congress that the former national security adviser appears to have misrepresented his Russia ties.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter Monday to the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, citing documents “in our possession ... that appear to indicate that General Flynn lied to the investigators who interviewed him in 2016 as part of his security clearance renewal” about income he made from a December 2015 speaking engagement at a gala hosted by the Russian state-owned media company RT.
Cummings cited a previously undisclosed March 14, 2016, Report of Investigation showing Flynn “told security clearance investigators that he was paid by ‘U.S. companies’ when he traveled to Moscow” for that gala and that Flynn told investigators “he has not received any benefit from a foreign country.”
But payment vouchers and other documents showed that Russia had “directly” paid for Flynn’s airfare, accommodations and other expenses, Cummings wrote.
In the case of Coats and Rogers, Trump reportedly sought their assistance after then-FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in March that the FBI was investigating “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
Trump’s conversation with Rogers was documented contemporaneously in an internal memo written by a senior NSA official, according to the officials. It is unclear if a similar memo was prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to document Trump’s conversation with Coats. Officials said such memos could be made available to both the special counsel now overseeing the Russia investigation and congressional investigators.
White House officials say Comey’s testimony about the scope of the FBI investigation upset Trump, who has dismissed the FBI and congressional investigations as a “witch hunt.” The president has repeatedly said there was no collusion.
Current and former senior intelligence officials viewed Trump’s requests as an attempt by the president to tarnish the credibility of the agency leading the Russia investigation.
A senior intelligence official said Trump’s goal was to “muddy the waters” about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats were ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, a step announced last week. Senior intelligence officials also saw the March requests as a threat to the independence of U.S. spy agencies.
The NSA and Brian Hale, a spokesman for Coats, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
“The White House does not confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims based on illegal leaks from anonymous individuals,” a White House spokesperson said. “The president will continue to focus on his agenda that he was elected to pursue by the American people.”
In addition to the requests to Coats and Rogers, senior White House officials sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.
The new revelations add to a growing body of evidence that Trump sought to co-opt and then undermine Comey before he fired him May 9.
At the same time, White House officials are seeking to stop the federal government’s top ethics officer from getting details about waivers granted to lobbyists and other appointees working in the administration, intensifying a power struggle between Trump and the ethics agency.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, sent a memo in April to the White House and federal agencies asking for information about such waivers. But in a May 17 letter, Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, questioned whether the Office of Government Ethics has legal jurisdiction to get information about waivers that have been granted.