“Let me begin by asking everyone in this room a very simple question: Do you hear that?”
Elijah Cummings, the Maryland representative who is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, paused to let his point sink in.
“Do you hear the silence?” he continued.
“This is the sound of House Republicans conducting no oversight of President Trump. Zero. That is what it sounds like when they abdicate their duty under the Constitution. We’ve been asking for months for basic oversight of the president and his advisers [regarding] their ties to Russia, but our chairman, Jason Chaffetz, has not lifted one finger.”
Cummings, speaking at a press conference Tuesday with other Democratic House leaders, was not exaggerating. Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who chairs the committee that’s charged with investigating corruption in the federal government, has stated that he has no plans to investigate retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s unusually close ties with the Russia government. Flynn resigned Monday as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser over Flynn’s December phone calls with the Russian ambassador, during which he possibly discussed lifting the economic sanctions the Obama administration had just imposed on Russia for meddling in the U.S. election. Flynn spent weeks insisting he did not talk to the Russian ambassador about the sanctions, seeing as doing so would be a violation of the Logan Act. He may have lied to the FBI about the conversations. Lying to a federal agent is a crime.
Rep. Elijah CummingsManuel Balce Ceneta
And Cummings has indeed been asking for oversight of Flynn for months — and not just into his Russia connection. Back in November, when Trump picked Flynn to be his national security adviser, the congressman asked for the oversight committee to look into Flynn’s “apparent conflicts of interest.”
In a November 18, 2016, letter to then-Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, Cummings wrote that Flynn “had received classified briefings during the presidential campaign while his consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, Inc., was being paid to lobby the U.S. Government on behalf of a foreign government’s interests. Lt. Gen. Flynn’s General Counsel and Principal, Robert Kelly, confirmed that they were hired by a foreign company to lobby for Turkish interests, stating: ‘They want to keep posted on what we all want to be informed of: the present situation, the transition between President Obama and President-Elect Trump.’ When asked whether the firm had been hired because of Lt. Gen. Flynn’s close ties to President-Elect Trump, Mr. Kelly responded, ‘I hope so.'”
The letter went on to state:
“Lt. Gen. Flynn also was paid to travel to Moscow in December 2015 and join Vladimir Putin at the head table during a dinner honoring the Kremlin-backed media network RT. During the event, Lt. Gen. Flynn gave a speech that was highly critical of the United States, stating, ‘The United States can’t sit there and say, Russia, you’re bad.’ Lt. Gen. Flynn has stated that he was paid by his speaker’s bureau, LAI, but he has not disclosed how much he made or what entity hired LAI.”
Cummings’ concerns about Flynn’s foreign connections have apparently proven out. Last month, then acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told the White House that Flynn had potentially misled the administration about the December phone calls with the Russian ambassador and, reported The Washington Post, “warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail.”
Cummings and other Democrats insisted Tuesday a Flynn investigation should not be a partisan issue, that Congressional Republicans as well as Democrats should want to find out the extent and substance of Flynn’s contacts with the Russian government before and after the Trump administration came into power, and what President Trump knew and when he knew it.
They do not, however, appear confident that their Republican colleagues will come around to their view. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused the GOP of “stonewalling” a needed investigation.
— Douglas Perry
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