Tag: House Intelligence committee

House panel subpoenas Flynn, Gates

The House Intelligence Committee has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony from former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign aide Richard Gates.

“As part of our oversight work, the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to examine the deep counterintelligence concerns raised in Special Counsel Mueller’s report, and that requires speaking directly with the fact witnesses,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), said in a statement on Thursday.

Schiff noted that both Flynn and Gates cooperated extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but said that they have so far “refused to cooperate fully with Congress.”

View the complete June 13 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Devin Nunes gets crushed at House Intelligence hearing for trying to pass off Manafort’s ties to Russia as normal

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) on Wednesday delivered a blistering denunciation of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) for trying to brush off former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s past ties to Russian agents as perfectly normal.

As part of his opening statement about hearings into the contents of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Nunes claimed that Mueller documented “a long litany of ordinary contacts between Trump associates and Russians,” while also claiming that “no conversations actually created or even discussed a conspiracy.”

Himes shot down Nunes’s claims during a House Intelligence Committee meeting by pointing out that Manafort’s history of working with pro-Kremlin political parties and his massive debts to a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch were far from ordinary. He also called out Nunes for shrugging off Manafort’s decision to share internal Trump campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian national with alleged ties to Russian intelligence, in the hopes that he would give it to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

View the complete June 12 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

House Intelligence enjoys breakthrough with Justice Department

An unexpected breakthrough in negotiations between the Justice Department and the House Intelligence Committee is about to offer some lawmakers an intimate look at highly sensitive intelligence files collected by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The development represents a rare example of a deal amid what Democrats otherwise describe as a sea of stonewalling by the president and his officials of their investigations.

While the Justice Department has not yet met all of the panel’s demands, Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.) and other committee Democrats say they are encouraged.

View the complete May 24 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Cohen told lawmakers Trump attorney Jay Sekulow encouraged him to falsely claim Moscow project ended in January 2016

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former longtime personal attorney, told a House panel during closed-door hearings earlier this year that he had been encouraged by Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow to falsely claim in a 2017 statement to Congress that negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, according to transcripts of his testimony released Monday evening.

In fact, Cohen later admitted, discussions on the Moscow tower continued into June of the presidential election year, after it was clear Trump would be the GOP nominee. Cohen is serving three years in prison for lying to Congress, financial crimes and campaign finance violations.

House Democrats are now scrutinizing whether Sekulow or other Trump attorneys played a role in shaping Cohen’s 2017 testimony to Congress. Cohen has said he made the false statement to help hide the fact that Trump had potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in a possible Russian project while he was running for president.

View the complete May 20 article by Tom Hamburger, Ellen Nakashima and Karoun Demirjian on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats renew attacks on Trump attorney general

Democrats ripped into Attorney General William Barr on Friday, signaling he’ll be a focal point of their attacks on the Trump administration in the post-Mueller report world.

The Democrats say Barr bungled the handling of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report and that he has repeatedly sought to protect President Trump, contrasting his comments about what the report said with the actual text that was released on Thursday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) issued a subpoena on Friday to win the release of the full report, while other Democrats have called for Barr’s resignation.

View the complete April 20 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Blackwater founder Erik Price hid information about 2016 Trump Tower meeting while under oath: House Intel chair

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Erik Prince hid information about his attendance at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Iran while under oath.

In an interview with on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head,” Price stated that he was present at an Aug. 3, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower to “talk about Iran policy,” and that he disclosed information about that meeting even though it does not appear in a transcript of his testimony.

According to Schiff, Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dead wrong.

View the complete March 10 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Cohen Offers Documents in Bid to Show Trump Lawyers Helped With False Testimony Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, leaving the Capitol on Wednesday. Credit Erin Schaff/The New York Times Image

WASHINGTON — Michael D. Cohen on Wednesday provided new documents to the House Intelligence Committee that he said illustrated changes made at the request of President Trump’s lawyers to a knowingly false written statement that he delivered to Congress in 2017, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Cohen, in what was expected to be his last visit to Capitol Hill, brought multiple drafts of his 2017 statement along with emails with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about its drafting, hoping to back up claims that he made last week at an open hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. In that session, Mr. Cohen testified that there were “changes made, additions” to the original written statement, including about the length of negotiations over a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It was not immediately clear how many changes were made by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, including Jay Sekulow, or how drastic those changes were. Two of the people familiar with the documents and Mr. Cohen’s testimony, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the closed-door session, said that at least some of the changes appeared to play down the knowledge of the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, about the project.

View the March 6 article by Nicholas Fandos and Maggie Haberman on The New York Times website here.

House panel seeks to interview Trump Organization executive

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are planning to request that Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg appear before the panel for questioning, an aide confirmed Thursday.

“The Committee anticipates bringing in Mr. Weisselberg,” the aide told The Hill.

Weisselberg’s attorney declined to comment.

View the complete February 28 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

House Intelligence chairman voices concern that Mueller’s scrutiny of Trump’s finances isn’t adequate

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff at the Capitol on Wednesday. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee expressed concern Sunday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has not adequately scrutinized President Trump’s finances and said House investigators plan to probe Trump’s relationship with a bank implicated in Russian money laundering.

“We are not interested in our committee in whether he’s a tax cheat or not worth what he says he is,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “What we are interested in is, does the president have business dealings with Russia such that it compromises the United States?”

In particular, Schiff said the House panel plans to investigate Trump’s two-decade relationship with Deutsche Bank, a German institution that has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties in recent years after admitting its role in a $10 billion money laundering scheme that allowed clients in Russia to move vast sums overseas.

View the complete February 10 article by Greg Miller on The Washington Post website here.

Trump blasts Schiff as ‘political hack’ over new investigation

President Trump on Wednesday denounced House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as a “political hack” for opening a sweeping investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia and his personal finances.

“He has no basis to do that. He’s just a political hack who’s trying to build a name for himself,” Trump told reporters at the White House after announcing his pick to lead the World Bank.

“It’s just presidential harassment and it’s unfortunate and it really does hurt our country,” Trump said of the probe.

View the complete February 6, 2019 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.