Michael Flynn is playing hard to get. Trump’s former national security adviser will not honor a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to that panel’s top senator.
The subpoena compelled Flynn to turn over private documents related to his relationships to foreign governments.
“That’s not a surprise to the committee,” the Republican Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr told NBC News of Flynn’s defiance. “We’ll figure out on General Flynn what the next step, if any, is.”
Burr subsequently qualified his claim, the Huffington Post’s Laura Barrón-López reports.
Flynn’s tenure in the White House was cut short by revelations that he had misled Vice-President Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Weeks after his departure, Flynn acknowledged that he had been on the payroll of the Turkish government while serving as a top surrogate and adviser to Trump’s campaign — even as the GOP standard-bearer accused his rival of making “pay-to-play” arrangements with foreign governments.
Weeks after that, news broke that Flynn had neglected to list three Russia-linked sources of income — including $45,000 in speaking fees from the Kremlin-backed RT news network — in his legally required White House ethics forms.
Last month, the top Democratic and Republican members of the House Oversight Committee announced that Flynn’s failure to disclose the payments he received from foreign governments likely constituted a violation of U.S. law.
That same day, Flynn told friends, “I just got a message from the president to stay strong,” Yahoo News reports.
White House lawyers had repeatedly warned Trump not to contact Flynn.
The Oversight Committee had asked the White House to provide it with Flynn’s security clearance paperwork, receipts from payments he received from foreign governments, and other documents related to the hiring and firing of the former national security adviser.
The Trump administration refused to honor a single one of those requests.
