White House stonewalls Capitol Hill over records in Russia probe

Source: CNN | September 25, 2017 | Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb

(CNN) – Tension is rising between congressional investigators probing Russia meddling and the Trump administration, as the White House and Justice Department withhold a number of records sought by Capitol Hill at a critical time in the investigations.

Operating on parallel tracks from special counsel Robert Mueller, the three congressional committees probing Russia’s election meddling have asked for scores of documents related to everything from Jared Kushner’s security clearance to records surrounding President Donald Trump’s discussions with James Comey before he was fired as FBI director.

At the same time, the GOP leader of the House intelligence committee is threatening to hold a public hearing this week over documents the Justice Department has so far failed to turn over to Capitol Hill regarding the FBI’s ties to a British operative who compiled a dossier of allegations on Trump’s connections with Russia.

And the GOP-led Senate judiciary committee is in a growing standoff with the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, over several issues, including the department’s decision to prevent two senior FBI officials from sitting down for transcribed interviews on Capitol Hill to provide eyewitness accounts of the Comey firing.

While the Trump campaign has provided lawmakers with thousands of pages of documents thus far, there are numerous requests where the White House, FBI and Justice Department have missed the committees’ deadlines, prompting some committee members to threaten to issue subpoenas to the West Wing and Justice Department.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, told CNN on Saturday that the White House has “refused” since June to comply with the panel’s bipartisan request for documents over Trump’s conversations with Comey — “despite repeated attempts” to obtain the information.

“The White House’s refusal to answer Congress in full and truthfully raises serious questions about the White House’s intent, including the potential that it is misleading Congress,” Schiff said in an email. “The White House must fully comply immediately; if it does not, the Committee should, on a bipartisan basis, subpoena the records.”

……

Tagged: , , ,

Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.