The Senate intelligence committee on Wednesday issued a subpoena for the former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of the investigation into the Trump camp’s ties to Russia.
The Senate panel said the subpoena was for documents relevant to its inquiry into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, which Flynn declined to provide when the committee first requested them last month.
Senators Richard Burr and Mark Warner, the top Republican and Democrat on the intelligence committee, made the announcement less than 24 hours after federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of Flynn as part of a separate but parallel investigation into Russian meddling in the November election. The move also comes on the heels of Trump’s abrupt decision to fire the FBI director, James Comey, who was leading the federal government’s inquiry.
The FBI and the Senate and House intelligence committees are each conducting their own investigations into potential links between associates of Donald Trump and the Kremlin. The US government concluded late last year that Russian agents had sought to influence the outcome of the US election and were behind the hacking and release of emails of both the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Flynn, who was named by Trump as his national security adviser after the election, emerged at the center of the controversy when it was revealed he had secretly discussed US sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the US in December. Flynn was forced to resign from his role in February after it became public that he misled Vice-President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
A spokesman for Flynn did not immediately return a request for comment when asked about the subpoenas.
Flynn has been accused by senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill of violating the law for taking payments from groups associated with foreign governments without first seeking permission, which he was required to do as a retired lieutenant general. Flynn also failed to disclose the earnings, which include a $45,000 appearance in Moscow sponsored by the Kremlin-backed news channel RT and a $500,000 contract to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government.
The Senate intelligence committee said it had made a request on 28 April for documents relevant to its Russia investigation, but it said Flynn had declined to cooperate through his counsel. He was given a deadline of 9 May to submit the documents in question.
The White House has defended Flynn against any allegations of wrongdoing, saying only that his resignation was appropriate due to his conduct with Pence.
“I think Mike Flynn is somebody who honorably served our country in uniform for over 30 years,” the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, told reporters this week.
“As he’s noted, Lt Gen Flynn was asked for his resignation because he misled the vice-president. But beyond that, I think he did have an honorable career. He served with distinction in uniform for over 30 years, and the president does not want to smear a good man.”
It was reported this week that Barack Obama, who in 2014 fired Flynn as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had warned Trump against hiring Flynn as his national security adviser.
Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, testified before the Senate on Monday that she informed the Trump administration in January that Flynn “was compromised with respect to the Russians” and susceptible to blackmail. The White House nonetheless kept Flynn on for 18 days, firing him only after the Washington Post reported both on his conversations with Kislyak and Yates’s warnings.
