The White House sought to distance itself from the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's dealings with Russia after the House Oversight Committee announced Tuesday Flynn had accepted payments from Russian organizations, which is against the law.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer fended off questions as to whether the White House and President Donald Trump's transition team failed to properly vet Flynn, who documents show accepted $60,000 from three Russian firms in 2015, including the Russian government-owned television network RT.

"You fill out the forms, you do an investigation, you do a background check. Every employee gets that background check done, and they have a security clearance and they fill it out and that's how everyone operates under the same guise," Spicer said, under repeated questioning.

"You rely on that person when they sign their name and then investigators to pick it up," he said, explaining why the White House had not caught Flynn's engagements with Russia. "But there's always going to be, in the case of people who had a prior clearance in the case of the time that they filled it out and had it adjudicated, they could have engaged in something and whether they updated that or not."

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014 under then-President Barack Obama. Under investigation are a speech he made in late 2015 to RT, as well as two other companies with Kremlin ties. He did not include those payments on his original ethics forms, but filed an amended form that listed those payments in February, after he had been fired by the White House for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about conversations he had during the transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about potentially lifting sanctions on Russia.

On Tuesday morning, House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said classified documents the committee had received from the DIA indicated Flynn had improperly accepted payment.

"As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey, or anybody else, and it appears as if he did take that money," Chaffetz said at a press conference with his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. "It was inappropriate. And there are repercussions for the violation of law."

Those consequences could include "fines and five years imprisonment," Chaffetz said.

The leaders did not say the White House was obstructing the committee's work in its refusal to turn over records of Flynn's calls and contacts during the transition and at the White House, a request the scope of which Spicer said was "unwieldy" and "outlandish."

Spicer repeatedly denied that it was Trump team's responsibility to have unearthed the payments or to turn over every record of Flynn's communications even though he was, as one reporter stated, "not making calls as a private citizen, he was making calls as a future national security adviser."

"We started this administration on Jan. 20," Spicer said. "All the information that they are talking occurred prior to him [Flynn] being at the White House."

Asked to comment on Chaffetz's conclusion, Spicer said anything Flynn may have done in 2015 or 2016 was not in purview of the White House.

"When Chaffetz was asked whether or not what he is looking into had anything to do with the White House, my understanding was that he was very clear that it had to do with his time prior to that," Spicer said. "So talking about his role at the White House seems not germane to any of the questions that are being asked."

Nor would he say if Trump believed Flynn had violated the law.

"That would be a question for him and a law enforcement agency whether he filled out – I don't know what he filled out and what did or did not do," Spicer said. "That all happened – he filled the form out prior to coming here and so it would be up to the committee and other authorities to look at that, I don't know."

The press secretary did say that the White House would "absolutely" consider a payment from RT a payment from a foreign government – a violation of law if accepted by a government employee.