Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is again pushing the Justice Department to release the details and transcripts that led to the firing of former President Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Friday asking for details and transcripts of the call Flynn made to then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016.
Grassley also requested the FBI report “summarizing the intercepted calls.”
Flynn was removed from his position by the White House after he was found to have lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of the December 2016 conversation with Kislyak, which concerned U.S. sanctions against Russia, among other things.
Flynn left the Trump administration on Feb. 13, 2017.
Grassley was joined by ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Feb. 15, 2017, in asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-FBI Director James Comey in asking for the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak call, and the FBI report summarizing the calls.
The Justice Department at the time declined, citing an ongoing criminal investigation. Instead, Comey gave the Senate Judiciary Committee a briefing in March 2017 that included the Flynn debacle.
Comey said the FBI agents that interviewed Flynn about his conversation with Kislyak claimed they did not believe Flynn intentionally lied about his conversation, and that the Justice Department would not prosecute him for false statements he made during his interview with FBI investigators.
A career nonpartisan law enforcement officer took notes during the briefing, as did committee staff, and both sets of notes back up Comey’s sentiment.
Since the Comey briefing, Sessions recused himself — on March 2, 2017 — from the federal government’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign and Comey was fired — on May 9, 2017.
Sessions’s recusal paved the way for special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 by Rosenstein, the acting attorney general in the capacity of overseeing the investigation.
Flynn was indicted by Mueller in November 2017, and in December 2017 he and Mueller’s team agreed to a plea bargain. Flynn pleaded guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding about his conversations with Kislyak, and his sentencing remains delayed as he agreed to cooperate with Mueller.
Grassley notes in his Friday letter that because of the guilty plea, the committee’s “oversight interest in the underlying documents requested more than a year ago now outweighs any legitimate executive branch interest in withholding it.”
Grassley also cites remarks Comey has made publicly during his book tour. During a recent interview, Comey denied telling the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn about his conversation with Kislyak had said that they did not believe Flynn intentionally lied, and that the Justice Department would not prosecute him for false statements.
Because of this, the committee wants to know “the FBI agents’ actual assessments of their interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, particularly given the apparent contradiction between what then-Director Comey told us in March 2017 and what he now claims.”
In addition to what Grassley requested in February 2017, he also wants the agents’ notes memorializing their interview with Flynn — the interview in which he allegedly lied, leading to the indictment by Mueller — and any supporting documents.
Grassley gives the Justice Department and FBI a deadline of May 25, and also asks for special agent Joe Pientka to be available for a transcribed interview with the committee no later than June 1.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, is currently investigating a handful of matters pertaining to the 2016 election, including Russian meddling.
Both the Justice Department and FBI declined to comment on the letter.
