It sure seems like Michael Flynn lied to federal investigators about his Russia ties

Embattled ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is in even more trouble than we thought.

On Monday afternoon, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, published a letter detailing strong evidence that Flynn lied about his contacts with Russia during a 2016 security clearance renewal process — which is a felony.

“General Flynn told security clearance investigators that he was paid by ‘US companies’ when he traveled to Moscow in December 2015 to dine at a gala with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Cummings writes. “The actual source of the funds for General Flynn’s trip was not a US company, but the Russian media propaganda arm, RT.”

If this is true — and the evidence Cummings presents in the letter is pretty compelling — then Flynn’s request for immunity in exchange for testimony about Trump starts to make a lot more sense. Lying to federal investigators is punishable by up to five years in prison. If there’s proof that Flynn unambiguously lied, with the intent to deceive the US government about his foreign contacts, then he has good reason to be quaking in his boots right now.

This doesn’t necessarily end with Flynn. Cummings’s letter is addressed to the House Oversight Committee chair, Republican Jason Chaffetz, who has subpoena power. Cummings is asking Chaffetz to subpoena all documents covering White House contact with Flynn. The question becomes: Did the White House have any reason to believe Flynn had covered up his relationship with Russia? Or did they know — and just not care?

In April 2014, the Obama administration pushed then-Lt. Gen. Flynn out of his job running the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Like many retired generals and admirals, Flynn moved to the private sector, opening a small consulting firm. Unlike many retired generals and admirals, he agreed to work for two different foreign governments.

Flynn became a regular talking head on RT and, in December 2015, was paid $45,000 to attend its 10th anniversary gala — the dinner mentioned in Cummings’s note. He sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, and delivered a speech to the attendees about his view of the world. At the time, Flynn’s payment — let alone its source — was not public knowledge.

In January 2016, Flynn had to renew his security clearance. Former government officials and contractors often do this, even if they’re no longer working in government, just in case they want to go back to jobs where they have to handle classified information.

The clearance process required Flynn to fill out a form, called an SF-86. The form asked him to disclose “any contact with a foreign government” he’d had in the past seven years. Flynn was also interviewed by federal investigators in February 2016, who were looking into the claims on his SF-86.

Cummings got ahold of the “Report of Investigation” filled out by those federal investigators after they concluded their work. According to the reports, Flynn disclosed that he took the December 2015 trip to Moscow — but seems to have lied about the source.

“FLYNN stated ... HE has not received any benefit from a foreign country,” the report says, according to Cummings. “[He claimed] all trips were funded by U.S. companies.”

The investigators didn’t conclude that Flynn was lying — or at least, there’s nothing in Cummings’s letter to suggest that they did. But based on evidence that has emerged in the past year, we know for a fact that what he said wasn’t true in any meaningful sense. The Russian government paid his speaker’s bureau — a kind of agent for public speakers — for the appearance, and the bureau transferred the Russian money to him. The statement he made to investigators, at least as recorded in their report, seems to be false.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Flynn committed a felony — at least, not necessarily.

Legally speaking, a prosecutor would have to prove that Flynn was intentionally deceiving the investigators. A previous FBI investigation into Flynn’s lies to investigators — this time about the nature his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016 — concluded that Flynn’s deception wasn’t intentional, so it ended up getting dropped. Something like that could happen this time around.

But this is bad for Flynn.

It’s tough to see how he couldn’t know the actual source of a payment to attend a Russian government dinner. There is a non-zero chance that he committed a felony, and he knows it. That would worry anyone; Flynn seems to be worried too, judging by his offer to testify about Trump and Russia in exchange for immunity (an offer that neither the House nor the Senate — nor the FBI — has taken him up on so far).

And the Trump administration should be worried too. The more play Flynn’s misconduct gets in the press, especially when it comes to lies about relations with Russia, the more political pressure Republicans like Chaffetz will feel to subpoena Trump’s records to find out what the administration knew. Clearly, that’s the real point of Cummings’s letter.

It’s all Trump can do to avoid being buried by Russia scandal news. This is one more point of pressure, a new front in a war they seem to be losing.