On Tuesday evening, Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee responded to the premature closure of the investigation and to the Republicans issuing, without warning, a memo that not only contradicted the evidence before the committee, but the consensus of the intelligence agencies going back to before the election.
Adam Schiff and other members of the committee spoke briefly, calling the end of the investigation a serious failure and a dereliction of duty. They also pointed out that Republican failures to challenge witnesses’ claims of privilege, or allowing them to simply refuse to answer questions, left the entire Congress in an extremely weakened condition and threatened the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch. Republicans not only allowed Trump’s White House staff an unprecedented, broad interpretation of executive privilege that could be applied to any conversation — including conversations that did not include Trump — they also claimed privilege over events during the transition, and over conversations that occurred after leaving the White House. Republicans even allowed some witnesses to decide on their own that questions were “relevant” and to refuse to answer, with no consequence.
The Democratic status report has now been released. It details an amazing list of people who have never been called before the committee, and shows just how pointless the Republican claims that the number of interviews really are.
The Democratic report identifies at least 45 witnesses who Democrats wanted to appear, many of whom had already agreed to cooperate, but who Republicans did not call. This includes: Reince Priebus, Stephen Miller, KT McFarland, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Sam Nunberg, George Nader, Keith Kellogg, Joseph Schmitz, Sergei Millian, Natalia Veselnitskaya, analysts at Cambridge Analytica, representatives from Deutsche Bank, and NRA officials. The list of documents that Republicans refused to subpoena is even longer than the list of witnesses they refused to call.
The report also identifies a number of witness that Democrats wanted to subpoena to force them to answer questions they had refused to answer on first appearance, including Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks, Jeff Sessions, Erik Prince, and Steve Bannon. Overall, it’s hard to find any person of note on the Trump campaign who did fully answer the committee’s questions.
The Democratic document is a powerful indictment of the inadequacy of the House committee and the leadership of Devin Nunes.
The Democrats also pointed out that many witnesses, even though who had no access to secret information, were restricted to closed door hearing, allowing Republicans to limit public awareness of anything they said. In fact, of those who were only the Trump campaign, only two appeared at any open hearing.
The document suggests that over the course of the committee’s work, they learned a good deal about Trump and Kushner’s business — enough that people associated with both companies, including Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr should have been called back for additional questioning, but Republicans refused.
And at first glance, the report doesn’t contain a great deal of new information, it does have at least one piece of news.
Moreover, as the Committee has learned, candidate Trump’s private business was actively negotiating a business deal in Moscow with a sanctioned Russian bank during the election period. We must also seek to determine: Did the Russian government, through business figures close to the Kremlin, seek to court Donald Trump and launder funds through the Trump Organization; and did candidate Trump’s financial exposure via Deutsche Bank or other private loans constitute a point of leverage that Russia may have exploited and may still be using?