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Donald Trump's path through Russia probe still unclear

Paul McGeough

Washington: As the high-powered congressional probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 election gather steam, who is in power and who is out has become key to the response of those connected to US President Donald Trump now and during his campaign.

Those who have been cast out are starting to play ball – former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has agreed to co-operate, and last week turned over more than 300 pages of documents to the House and Senate intelligence committees.

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Trump blasts 'fake news media'

On his return to the US, Donald Trump claims the reports his son-in-law tried to set up a secret channel of communications with Moscow were 'fake news'.

Disgraced and sacked national security adviser Michael Flynn, who survived for just a few weeks before he was revealed to have lied about his Russian connections, is pleading the Fifth Amendment, to protect himself from self-incrimination, and after first refusing to produce documents, he caved on Tuesday, with a promise to produce some papers in the coming week.

But proximity to the Oval Office seems to offer a sense of security. Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has rejected a request to provide documents to Congress.

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"I declined the invitation to participate as the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered," Cohen told The Associated Press. "I find it irresponsible and improper that the request sent to me was leaked by those working on the committee."

All three men – Manafort, Flynn and Cohen – have been linked to Russian interests.

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Manafort reportedly earned millions of dollars as a consultant to Moscow-aligned political figures in Ukraine; Flynn was paid tens of thousands of dollars for a speaking engagement in Moscow at which he dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin; and Cohen reportedly helped broker a peace proposal in February that might have let Moscow off the hook for its infractions in Ukraine.

But Washington is still waiting for a better sense of how Trump, personally and as President, will play the probes – both those being mounted by Congress and the more powerful investigation being run by former FBI chief Robert Mueller,  appointed as a special counsel by the US Justice Department.

Trump has branded the Mueller investigation a witch-hunt, but in the same press conference the President insisted that he respected Mueller's appointment. And in a Tuesday tweet he charged: "Russian officials must be laughing at the US & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News."

Greeted by reports that the investigations had reached into the White House and his family, with remarkable allegations that during the transition between presidencies, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner had asked the Russian embassy for access to its secured communications to open a secret back-channel to the Kremlin, Trump returned from his first trip abroad in the weekend again lashing out at "fake" news.

But reports of an evolving White House strategy to establish a self-contained "war room" in the West Wing indicate a very real determination to contain the damage of a steady stream of media reports on the Russia investigations and allow the administration to get on with the business of governing.

All the investigations have significant powers to order targeted individuals to co-operate.

Mueller's is a criminal investigation, which has been granted wide power to pursue leads wherever they might go. And the congressional committees can seek congressional rulings that any who refuse to co-operate be held in contempt – for which they could ultimately be jailed.

Flynn's change of heart reveals a belated understanding of the limits of pleading the Fifth – legal scholars explain that while he can protect himself by refusing to testify, he has no protection in terms of producing documents.

It's open to question whether or not the Republican-controlled Senate would vote to hold Flynn in contempt, but a group of key Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee are said to have emerged as a critical force in getting to the bottom of ties between Trump's campaign and others among his associates and Moscow.

The four – Susan Collins of Maine, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Roy Blunt of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida – have revealed, to varying degrees, a belief that the committee must produce a report of sufficient credibility to be accepted by the public and both sides of the aisle in Congress.

"This is not about the President, this is about the presidency," Lankford, formerly a Baptist minister, told The New York Times. "This is about where we are as a nation."

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