Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will not honor a subpoena for documents from a U.S. Senate panel investigating election interference by Russia, as the one-time aide to President Donald Trump will instead assert his Fifth Amendment rights, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
That report came several days after the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), told reporters that Flynn's lawyers were not going to honor the committee's subpoena.
A spokesperson later said last Thursday that Burr had been mistaken - but now that exact story line seems to be developing today.
"Gen. Flynn¹s lawyers said he would not honor the subpoena, and that¹s not a surprise to the committee," Burr said at the time, "but we¹ll figure out on Gen. Flynn what the next step, if any is."
"It is Mike Flynn's right to plead the 5th," said Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"We will get to the truth one way or another," Lankford added.
Flynn's lawyers had previously sounded out the idea of getting immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony before the Congress, but that was not accepted by the House and Senate Intelligence panels, which are leading the Congressional probe into Russian actions in 2016.
Flynn has come under scrutiny for several things - his contacts with Russian officials during the Trump transition, not disclosing payments from Russian groups in 2015 as required for former top military officers, and belatedly disclosing that he was working as a paid agent of the Turkish government, even as he was campaigning for Mr. Trump last year.
During the campaign, Flynn himself had raised questions about legal troubles for Hillary Clinton over her private email server, questioning why one Clinton IT aide refused to cooperate with that investigation.
"When you're given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime," Flynn told NBC's Meet the Press on September 25, 2016.
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