The leaks that led to the resignation of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn were politically motivated, a top Republican senator said Thursday, joining a House Republican who has suggested the same.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said after Flynn’s departure in mid-February that Obama-era officials are likely behind the leaks that precipitated Flynn’s resignation. Those disclosures, he said, are part of a broader trickle of leaks aimed at undermining the Trump administration.
Texas senator Ted Cruz said Thursday that the leaks were driven by a political agenda.
“Any citizen should be concerned about classified intelligence materials being weaponized to advance a political agenda, and that appears to be exactly what happened with the attacks on General Flynn,” Cruz told reporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“Releasing the details of intercepted conversations with foreign ambassadors is not the ordinary sort of leak that Washington was built on. It is a federal crime,” he said. “It’s highly disturbing to see classified information being released to advance a political agenda.”
Cruz later acknowledged that he was unsure of whether reports on the matter were accurate.
“There have been press reports that Obama holdovers who did not want the details of the Iran deal made public were behind the illegal and criminal leaks targeting General Flynn,” he said. “I don’t know if those reports are accurate or not.”
Flynn, who held pre-inauguration conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, admitted that he had misinformed administration officials about the content of those communications.
Cruz said that those contacts were not alarming, but recognized that any potential deception by Flynn about the talks warranted dismissal.
“The reason General Flynn lost his job was not, as I understand it, the contents of the conversation. But it was rather that he was less than truthful with the vice-president about it,” Cruz said. “If one lies to the president or vice-president, that should be a firing offense. I don’t know if General Flynn did or not, but if that’s what he did, then that should be a firing offense.”
Nunes, who has called for an FBI investigation of the leaks, on Sunday said top-level Obama officials would have been among the few with access to details of calls between Flynn and Kislyak.
“The number of people that would actually have known that General Flynn, who was the national security advisor designee was having conversations with the Russians had to be very, very small number,” Nunes said on Face the Nation. “It had to be at the highest levels of the Obama administration.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee is folding an investigation of Flynn’s communications into an existing investigation about Russian interference in the election.
