Days after former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates confirmed the classified nature of months-old calls between Mike Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, the House Ethics Committee has remained silent on whether it will look into complaints against Democratic members who discussed the substance of those classified calls publicly.
The committee’s avoidance of the allegations against Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Jackie Speier, both members of the House Intelligence Committee, comes after it swiftly took up complaints against the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, over a similar charge.
“No comment,” Tom Rust, chief counsel for the House Ethics Committee, told the Washington Examiner when asked about the status of a complaint against Schiff and Speier that was filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics last month. Asked to clarify why the chairwoman and ranking member of the ethics panel commented publicly when it came to the complaints against Nunes, Rust again declined to comment.
Judicial Watch, a right-leaning watchdog group, sent a letter the Office of Congressional Ethics on April 14 that questioned whether Schiff and Speier had improperly disclosed classified information when they spoke openly about the content of calls between Flynn, then President Trump’s national security adviser, and Kislyak. Both Democratic lawmakers confirmed that their conversations, which were leaked to the media in February, had focused on U.S. sanctions against Russia, despite Flynn’s previous denials that he ever mentioned sanctions to Kislyak prior to Inauguration Day.
Schiff acknowledged and discussed the implications of Flynn’s sanctions talk during a recent speech, and Speier said “we do know” that sanctions came up in Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak during an interview last month with the Daily Caller.
But Yates told senators on Monday that the content of the calls was still classified when she refused to answer questions about Flynn’s conduct during a congressional hearing.
“I understand that there have been news reports to that account. But I can’t confirm whether in fact those conversations regarding sanctions occurred, because that would require me to reveal classified information,” Yates said.
Nunes has faced similar criticism for referencing classified information in statements to the media.
MoveOn.org, a progressive activist group, filed a complaint against Nunes with the Office of Congressional Ethics on March 28, alleging the Republican lawmaker had improperly disclosed classified information by telling reporters about the existence of intelligence reports in which the identities of Trump associates had been “unmasked.”
That same day, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — a watchdog group previously run by David Brock, a Democrat operative — filed a similar complaint against Nunes. Another left-leaning group, Democracy 21, joined CREW in complaining about Nunes’ press conference.
The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into the matter on April 6, just nine days after the barrage of Democratic complaints. The panel can choose to review complaints filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics or can decide to look into a matter on its own if members agree to do so.
