President faces questions of interference
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump is facing new questions about political interference in the investigations into Russian election meddling following reports that White House officials secretly funnelled material to the chairman of the House intelligence committee.
Trying to fend off the growing criticism, Mr 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 Mr Trump — secretly helped House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes examine intelligence information there last week.
Mr 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 the White House since the day Mr Trump took office. On Thursday, an attorney for Michael Flynn, Mr Trump’s ex-national security adviser, said Gen Flynn is in discussions with the congressional committees about speaking to them in exchange for immunity. The talks are preliminary and no official offers have been made.
“Gen Flynn certainly has a story to tell and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” Gen 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.
Gen Flynn, a member of the Trump campaign and transition, was fired as national security adviser after it was publicly disclosed that he misled the vice-president about a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador to the US. Mr Flynn’s ties to Russia have been scrutinised 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 Mr Nunes’ apparent coordination 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 Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat.
Speaking on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Mr 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 Mr 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 Mr Nunes classified information that appears to have included transcripts of foreign officials discussing Mr Trump’s transition to the presidency, according to current and former US officials. Intelligence agencies routinely monitor the communications of foreign officials living in the US, although the identities of US citizens 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, Mr Nunes announced that he had evidence, via an unnamed source, showing that Mr 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.
Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Thursday the material the White House wants the House and Senate intelligence leaders to view was discovered by the National Security Council through the course of regular business.
He would not say whether it was the same material Mr Nunes had already seen.
A congressional aide said Mr Schiff did not receive the White House letter until after Mr Spicer announced it from the White House briefing room.
Mr Spicer had previously dismissed the notion that the White House had fed information to Mr Nunes, saying the idea that the congressman would come and brief Mr Trump on material the president’s team already possessed “doesn’t pass the smell test’’.