FLYNN ‘BROKE LAW’ — WALL’S A FAIL

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S former national security adviser Michael Flynn appears to have broken the law when he accepted payments from the Russian and Turkish governments and didn’t inform the government about it, the two top members of the House Oversight Committee said Tuesday.

Flynn did not ask permission from or inform the U.S. government about payments he received for appearances before Russian organizations in 2015 and for lobbying that helped Turkey’s government, the senior members of the committee said.

“I see no indication he complied with the law,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), said Tuesday at a joint press conference with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the committee.

Flynn is under investigation by the House and Senate intelligence committees and the FBI as part of their probes into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Chaffetz confirmed Flynn had failed to reveal the $34,000 he was paid to speak at a 2015 gala for RT, the Kremlinrun TV network, as well as the money he was paid by an air freight company and a cybersecurity firm with direct connections to Russia.

Chaffetz and Cummings suggested that Flynn could be criminally prosecuted because, as a former Army officer, he was barred from accepting payments from foreign governments, and demanded that the money he got “be recovered.”

“You simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else,” Chaffetz said at the press conference, which was held after he and Cummings reviewed classified documents about Flynn (photo inset) provided by his former agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Chaffetz and Cummings said they planned to write to the controller of the Army and the Defense Department’s inspector general to determine whether Flynn broke the law and whether the government needs to pursue criminal charges.

The congressmen also raised new questions about fees Flynn received as part of $530,000 in consulting work his company performed for a businessman tied to Turkey’s government.

Chaffetz added that the White House had refused to provide his committee with information and documents related to Flynn’s security clearance and payments.

The committee made six requests, and the White House cited reasons it could not comply with each of them, Cummings said.

In a statement, Flynn’s lawyer claimed that his client has done no wrong.

“As has previously been reported, Gen. Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of (the Defense Department) extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings,” Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, said in a statement.

The White House, however, was less outspoken in its defense of Flynn, repeatedly saying that questions should be directed to the former aide himself.

“That would be a question for him,” press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing Tuesday when asked whether Flynn had broken any laws. “I don’t know what he filled out and what he didn’t.”

“That happened before he came here,” Spicer said, adding that “the documents in question the Department of Defense possesses and they sent (it) over to them.”

“There’s nothing being asked for that pertains to his service at the White House,” he continued. Trump fired Flynn as his national security adviser in February after the former general lied to Vice President Pence about the nature of his discussions with the Russian ambassador before Trump was

sworn in.