Congressional Republicans rejected calls for an independent investigation into Michael Flynn’s communications with Russia, laying bare the party’s reluctance to challenge Donald Trump in the early weeks of his presidency.



As Democrats sought an inquiry into the ousted national security adviser’s covert discussions about sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to the US, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill were split on whether the issue warranted a new investigation led by Congress.

“I’m not going to prejudge the circumstances surrounding this. I think the administration will explain the circumstances that led to this,” the House speaker, Paul Ryan, told reporters on Tuesday.

The House intelligence committee “has been looking into this thing all along … just involvement with respect to Russia”, he added.

But Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican who chairs the intelligence committee and served as a member of Trump’s transition team, said he was less concerned with investigating Flynn’s conduct than with the question of who was behind the leaks that quickly spiraled into the former official’s dramatic resignation.

Nunes’s comments echoed the Trump administration’s emphasis on the leaks, rather than on the questions over when the White House became aware of Flynn’s contact with the Russians.

Republicans in the Senate, by contrast, were more steadfast in examining the events surrounding Flynn as part of an ongoing inquiry by the chamber’s own intelligence committee into Russian interference in the election. But they stopped well short of suggesting a separate investigation was necessary.

“The intelligence committee is already looking at Russian involvement in our election,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said at a press conference on Tuesday. “It is highly likely they will want to take a look at this episode as well. They have broad jurisdiction to do it.”

Asked if he was confident that Trump had not instructed Flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador, McConnell directed the question to the White House.

“The fundamental question for us is what is our involvement in it and who ought to look at it?” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.

Roy Blunt, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said at the press conference that he expected Flynn to testify before the panel “about both post-election activities and any other activities that he may be aware of”.

The Florida senator Marco Rubio, who also sits on the intelligence committee, similarly said the lingering questions surrounding Flynn would fall under the ongoing investigation into what the US government has said was an intentional effort by Russia to undermine the 2016 presidential election.

“I believe the scope of that would cover anything that has to do with Russia and its involvement in before, during and after the election,” Rubio said. “I have full confidence that the intelligence committee is going to do a good job. If they don’t, I’ll let everyone know that we didn’t, but I believe that we can and I believe that we will.”

Asked if Flynn should testify before the intelligence committee, Rubio said he wished to “first see the evidence that was gathered” before making a determination.

Questions nonetheless abound over what transpired with respect to the nature of Flynn’s conversations with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US, in December.

The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, offered a conflicting timeline for when the Trump administration became aware of Flynn’s phone call with Kislyak. Spicer also acknowledged on Tuesday that the justice department had warned administration officials that Flynn might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, but at the same time cast blame on the justice department for not acting soon enough.

And while Spicer categorically denied that Flynn had been directed by Trump to raise the issue of sanctions with the Russian ambassador, the president’s response to the controversy has been at several turns contradictory.

Last week, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was unaware of reports pertaining to Flynn’s communication with Russia. Spicer on Tuesday confirmed the president was aware of the allegations at least two weeks ago. On Monday, Trump’s senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said Flynn had the “full confidence” of the president – and yet, mere hours later, he had resigned.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said Flynn’s resignation “raises more questions than it answers and the American people deserve to know the truth” while calling for an independent criminal investigation.

“In the days and weeks ahead, the Trump administration has many serious questions to answer,” Schumer said. “These questions must be asked by independent and unbiased law enforcement officers. They must be answered truthfully by administration officials and any attempt to lie or mislead must be countered with the full force of the law.”

The White House, he underscored, “knew for weeks” that Flynn had misled the vice-president, Mike Pence, by not fully revealing the extent of his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Senator Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat on the intelligence committee, requested that the acting director of national intelligence, Mike Dempsey, provide details on any White House staff cleared for an abnormal level of access to classified information.

In a letter to Dempsey, Heinrich highighted that Flynn’s high-level access was maintained for more than two weeks after the justice department warned the White House he was susceptible to Russian blackmail and asked specifically about “any waivers or exceptions that would allow individuals who have otherwise not been deemed eligible … for a security clearance to access classified or controlled access information”.

He also requested information about whether “derogatory information” regarding Russia had emerged during Flynn’s most recent security clearance investigation. If it had, it would call into question the rigor of the screening, and create pressure to revoke Flynn’s clearance, a move often career-ending for former security officials who seek contracting or consulting positions after leaving government.

The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a vocal and frequent critic of Trump’s, was among the few Republicans who was bullish on investigating the details.

“I’d like to know, did he just do this as a rogue – Gen Flynn just decided to call the Russians up one day and say we’re gonna have a different view on sanctions, don’t worry about it – or did it come from somebody else in the White House?” Graham told reporters.

In a subsequent interview with CNN, Graham expressed skepticism about the idea that Flynn would raise the idea of revisiting sanctions with the Russian ambassador absent “some understanding that the administration would be sympathetic to the idea”.

Trump’s friendly posture toward Vladimir Putin has proved a longstanding challenge for Republicans, who have emphasized a hard line against Russia as a central tenet of US foreign policy.

Even as the party decried Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for pursuing a so-called “reset” with Russia as secretary of state, Trump continued to lavish Putin with praise and pointedly declined to criticize an individual deemed to be “a murderer and a thug” by many members of his party.

Trump’s decision to nominate as his secretary of state Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO with close ties to Russia, also caused rancor among the GOP’s national security hawks. But Tillerson was confirmed last month with the support of every Republican in the Senate.

Suggestions that Trump was weighing the possibility of lifting sanctions imposed against Russia by the Obama administration has also led to bipartisan support for legislation that would ratify those sanctions into law.

How to address the chain of events that led to the resignation of Flynn has posed the most significant and high-profile challenge since Trump was sworn into office on 20 January.

A group of House conservatives signaled they would be open to a broader congressional investigation into Flynn’s communications with Russia if the intelligences committees indicated the need.

“We need to make sure that we’re careful what we’re saying because we don’t have the facts, but I do think it’s incumbent upon the intelligence committees to determine what the facts are and to see if there has to be further investigation,” Raúl Labrador, a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters on Capitol Hill.

But even the most strident Russia hawks were reluctant to openly defy the new White House.

The Arizona senator John McCain, who has repeatedly sounded alarms over the Trump administration’s proximity to the Russian government, said he was not backing a full investigation into the Flynn resignation at this point.

He was, however, searing in his assessment of the power structure behind closed doors.

“It’s a dysfunctional White House,” McCain said. “Nobody knows who’s in charge and nobody knows who’s setting policies.”

Additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman

• This article was amended on 15 February 2017. An earlier version described Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, as the US ambassador to Russia.