Michael Flynn, Rick Gates Subpoenaed by House Intelligence Panel

(Bloomberg) -- The House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed former White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for documents and testimony in the panel’s ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The committee also subpoenaed former Trump Deputy Campaign Manager Rick Gates for documents and testimony.

Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, said it is “simply unacceptable” that both men have not cooperated fully with the committee, though they were key witnesses in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Flynn is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts during the presidential transition period in 2016 with the-then Russian ambassador to the U.S. Gates also pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and is cooperating with federal investigators.

Gates, who was Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine for a decade and went on to work on the campaign and inauguration, has been cooperating with Mueller’s probe. He pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiring to deceive the U.S. government about his work with Manafort and their financial accounts. He testified last year against his former boss. On March 15, Mueller asked for a 60-day extension on Gates’s sentencing, citing his ongoing cooperation.

The two men were instructed to produce documents to the committee by June 26. They’ve been requested to testify before the committee on July 10.

President Donald Trump offered well wishes on Thursday to Flynn, who has brought on conservative firebrand Sidney Powell as his lawyer ahead of his sentencing for lying to investigators in the Russia probe.

Trump tweeted about Flynn as he faced growing criticism over a comment to ABC News that he’d be open to accepting damaging information about a political rival from a foreign source.

“I think I’d take it,” the president said in an interview that aired Wednesday. Asked whether he would accept information from foreigners or hand it over to the FBI, Trump said he thought that “maybe you do both.”

Flynn lasted just three weeks as Trump’s first national security adviser before being forced out over revelations that he’d lied about conversations he had with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

--With assistance from Terrence Dopp.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Kathleen Hunter

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