Russia Probe: Flynn Offers To Testify, White House Linked To Disclosures, Rubio Reveals He Was Target

In a day of rapid revelations over White House involvement in the probe over Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, forced to resign as national security director over his contacts with Russian agents, offered to testify before Congressional investigators in exchange for criminal immunity, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California who has denied the White House was involved in disclosures he made about Trump associates being swept up in surveillance, in fact received the information from two White House officials, according to a report Thursday in The New York Times.

Regarding Flynn's offer to testify, the Wall Street Journal reported that a representative of Flynn refused to comment but "the fact that he was seeking immunity suggested Mr. Flynn feels he may be in legal jeopardy following his brief stint as the national security adviser."

Two sources told Patch that Flynn's offer to Congress - along with a separate offer to the FBI - was first broached days ago and that talks are ongoing.

Flynn's contacts with Russian officials and companies are being examined by both the FBI and the Congressional intelligence communities.

Flynn was paid nearly $70,000 in 2015 by Russian companies - the bulk of which came from RT, the Russian government-financed television network.

He also filed paperwork after being fired as National Security Adviser indicating that he had acted as an agent for Turkey while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign last year.

The disclosures about White House officials supplying Nunes with intelligence information bared public the odd chronology that he slipped onto the White House grounds in the thick of the night, viewed the information, then rushed back to the White House the next day to inform it of the information he was provided.

"Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee," The New York Times said.

Earlier this week, Nunes told Bloomberg's Eli Lake that "his source was not a White House staffer and was an intelligence official."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has also repeatedly thrown water on the notion that the White House had anything to do with the disclosures from Nunes.

"He has said, from my understanding on the record, that he did not meet with White House staff,” Spicer said.

At the Senate Intelligence Committee's first public hearing into Russian meddling into last year's election, Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who ran in the Republican primary against Trump, disclosed that it wasn't just Hillary Clinton who had been targeted by hackers with Russian IP addresses.

"Shortly after I announced that I would seek reelection to the United States Senate, former members of my presidential campaign team, who had access to the internal information of my presidential campaign, were targeted by IP addresses with an unknown location within Russia," Rubio announced. "That effort was unsuccessful."

Rubio went on, letting people know that the hacking has continued — as recently as Wednesday.

"Within the last 24 hours, at 10:45 a.m. yesterday, a second attempt was made, again against former members of my presidential campaign team, who had access to our internal information, again targeted from an IP address from an unknown location in Russia, and that effort was also unsuccessful," Rubio said.

Rubio's disclosure was just one of several at the hearing.

Clinton Watts, who has been a FBI agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Executive Officer of West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center, painted a dire picture for senators of Russian meddling, saying the United States must be vigilant.

"You can hack stuff and be covert, but you can't influence and be covert," he said. "You have to ultimately show your hand. And that's why we have been able to discover it online."

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said that investigators "need to follow the money," adding that "Russia's corruption problem, may be our corruption problem."

Watts responded that investigators need to "follow the trail of dead Russians. There have been more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation."

"They are dropping dead," he added, "even in Western countries."

The Senate investigation is expected to last for months.

Seven staff members have been given special clearance to examine thousands of pages of materials that would normally only be available only to the so-called "Gang of Eight" - the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice-Chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) have said they plan to take a deliberative approach to the probe and have assembled a list of around 20 people they plan to call to testify.

Tuesday's introductory hearing was considered a "primer."

Several high profile potential witnesses - including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign associates Roger Stone and Carter Paige, and Trump son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner - would not be called until toward the end of the probe.

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