Trump sought push-back on FBI

President asked for intelligence chiefs’ help against probe

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 selfincrimination.

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.”