Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump ally Roger Stone, and former Trump foreign policy consultant Carter Page have volunteered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s links to Russian election hacking.
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has not offered to testify, and that is raising speculation that he may have cut a deal and turned on Trump and his team.
CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem discussed the possibility in a panel discussion on Friday night when she said that former Trump foreign policy consultant Carter Page, ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone will all testify before the House Intelligence Committee regarding their ties to Russia.
“It’s not that interesting to me because I don’t think they’ll be under oath,” Kayyem said. “The one name not mentioned is a name I mention often on this show: Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser.”
“It is starting to look like — from my sources and from open reporting — that Mike Flynn is the one who may have a deal with the FBI and that’s why we have not heard from him for some time,” she said.
From my sources and what has been openly reported, it increasingly looks like #Flynn may have a deal with the FBI. #trumprussia pic.twitter.com/U0PHdexlFV
— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) March 25, 2017
Roger Stone appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, who grilled him on the Russia investigation.
Said Stone:
“I have had no contacts or collusion with the Russians. There is no collusion, none — at least none that I know about, in Donald Trump’s campaign for president.”
Stephanopoulos asked if Stone had any communication with the hacker known as Guccifer 2:
“Number one, I don’t concede Guccifer is a Russian agent,” he said. “Just because the intelligence services say something, as we know from history, does not make it true.”
Further, Stone said he has made all of his communications with the hacker public and that any suggestion the exchanges amounted to collusion with Russians are “absurd.”
“The inference that my communication — actually my exchange with Guccifer 2, which is entirely on Twitter, both public and private, and which I have now made entirely public, — constitutes collusion with the Russians is absurd,” he said, adding that the communications occurred before Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails were hacked and leaked to the public.
“My brief exchange with [Guccifer 2] is six weeks after the hacking of the and publication of the DNC documents, which I’m accused of colluding with him on. In other words, I would need a time machine in order to collude,” he said.
Stephanopoulos also asked about Paul Manafort:
“I have been a friend of Paul Manafort’s for, I don’t know, almost 50 years. We go back to Young Republicans together. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and I choose to take him at his word,” Stone said.
Watch:
