Former national security adviser Michael Flynn misled security clearance investigators about who funded a trip he took to Russia in 2015, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a letter released Monday.
“The Oversight Committee has in our possession documents that appear to indicate that General Flynn lied to the investigators who interviewed him in 2016 as part of his security clearance renewal,” Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).
{mosads}Flynn told investigators that “U.S. companies” had paid for the trip, but the committee has documentation that Russian state-run media outlet RT funded the trip, the letter said.
“Specifically, the Committee has obtained a Report of Investigation dated March 14, 2016, showing that General Flynn told security clearance investigators that he was paid by `U.S. companies’ when he traveled to Moscow in December 2015 to dine at a gala with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The actual source of the funds for General Flynn’s trip was not a U.S. company, but the Russian media propaganda arm, RT.”
RT reportedly paid Flynn $45,000 for a speech he gave at the event with Putin.
Flynn was subpoenaed to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but his lawyer on Monday informed the committee that Flynn would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights.
He previously offered to testify in front of both the House and Senate Intelligence committees in exchange for immunity, but committee leaders declined the offer.
Flynn was fired from his post as national security adviser in February for misleading Vice President Pence and other White House officials about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Russian officials reportedly bragged during the 2016 campaign that they could use Flynn to influence Trump in the White House.
Flynn last year declined to say how much he was paid for the speech.
“It was an interview in front of the forum, probably 200 people in the audience. My purpose there was I was asked to talk about radical Islam in the Middle East. They asked me to talk about what was going on in the situation unfolding in the Middle East,” he said.
— Updated at 5:33 p.m.