The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee probing Russian involvement in the 2016 election said on Sunday that former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea is “very significant” and shows he wasn’t working as a “rogue agent.”
“So I think this is very significant,” Rep. Adam Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week.” Special counsel Robert Mueller “must have concluded that he was getting a lot of value in terms of General Flynn’s cooperation.”
“I think the fact that in his factual basis for the plea he sets out that he wasn’t acting as a rogue agent, that in fact he was acting with the knowledge and at the direction of people who were senior members of the transition team,” the California Democrat said.
Flynn pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between
Trump campaign officials and Moscow.
“It indicates to me at least, that this is not the end of it by any means,” Schiff said, adding that the investigation will eventually lead to other members of the administration.
“Whether that will lead, ultimately, to the president, I simply don’t know,” he said.
Asked about a report in the New York Times that revealed senior members of the Trump transition team had been communicating with Flynn over his Russian contacts, Schiff said it lays out a tantalizing trail.
“The fact that he wasn’t doing this on his own, that others within the top of the transition were knowing of it. And indeed, the president might have been knowing of it,” Schiff said. “And the question I think for Bob Mueller and for us in Congress is was this directed by the president? And if so, what are the consequences of that?”
In a tweet on Saturday, Trump said he fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide! ,” the president wrote on Twitter.
Then on Sunday, Trump in a tweet said he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to back off the Flynn investigation.
But Comey, in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, said Trump pressured him during a White House dinner in February to drop the probe into Flynn.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Comey said Trump told him. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
