House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is moving to release dozens of witness transcripts from the panel’s Russia investigation after the nation’s spy chief said he would release them to end a two-year delay.
Schiff, who took over the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence following the 2018 midterm elections, pinned the blame on acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and his office for the lengthy standoff.
“After more than a year of unnecessary delay, the ODNI has finally concluded its protracted classification review of the Committee’s transcripts, and it also appears the White House has now abandoned its improper insistence on reviewing key transcripts, which the Committee appropriately rejected,” a Schiff spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. “This process had already taken far too long, most notably because the ODNI improperly held up the declassification review and release of several transcripts at the request of the White House.”
A letter sent by Grenell to Schiff on Tuesday, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, said that “the ODNI-supervised interagency review of 43 (of the original 53) transcripts was completed in June 2019” and that, “as of today, the interagency review of the remaining transcripts has been completed as well.” Grenell told Schiff that, “pursuant to your guidance, these transcripts have not been shared with the White House.”
Forty-three of the 53 transcripts went through the declassification process and were returned to Schiff over half a year ago, but he had not released them despite promising last fall to make them public quickly. A sticking point with the remaining 10 transcripts had been the desire by the ODNI to allow the White House to review them as part of the declassification process, which Schiff rejected. The ODNI relented, providing the declassified versions of the remaining 10 transcripts this week.
Schiff accused the White House of “hijacking” the process during an interview with Politico in September. The outlet reported at the time that “Schiff still intends to release the bulk of the Russia transcripts in the near future.” Nearly a year later, he had not done so.
“All of the transcripts, with required redactions can be released to the public without any concerns of disclosing classified material,” Grenell’s letter said. “In the interests of transparency and accountability, I urge you to honor your previous public statements, and your Committee’s unanimous vote on this matter, to release all 53 cleared transcripts to all Members of Congress and the American public as soon as possible.”
The acting spy chief added: “I am also willing to release the transcripts directly from the ODNI, as to ensure we comply with the unanimous and bipartisan vote to release the transcripts.”
The declassification process by the ODNI was expected to take just a few weeks or months. Nearly two years later, GOP lawmakers and Trump administration officials blamed Schiff for the delay.
“Adam Schiff is thwarting the will of the House Intelligence Committee as expressed in the bipartisan vote in September 2018 to make these transcripts public,” one senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner late last month. “He has appointed himself arbiter of what the public should see and has refused to allow the White House to review its own equities, making declassification of 10 of the transcripts impossible. It’s difficult to imagine any motive other than Schiff is still trying to control the narrative on Russia collusion.”
Schiff’s spokesperson said Wednesday, “We are now reviewing the proposed redactions from ODNI based on classification, law enforcement sensitivity, or items ODNI requests be for official-use only.” The official also cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the redactions, claiming that, “given the overtly political role now played by the Acting DNI, including the leak of his letter, this committee and the public can have little confidence that his determinations are made on the merits.”
The spokesperson added: “Our review of ODNI’s newly proposed redactions will be as expeditious as possible given the constraints of the pandemic, and we look forward to releasing these transcripts, which relate to misconduct by the Trump campaign and the president himself.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report, released in April 2019, said his investigation found the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but that it “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, 27 GOP lawmakers said in a Tuesday letter that the delay was Schiff’s fault.
“We understand now that Chairman Schiff is blocking the release of these transcripts. This news, if accurate, is disturbing — especially in light of Chairman Schiff’s cries in 2019 for transparency regarding allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia,” the congressmen said.
The 10 transcripts that Schiff successfully blocked the White House from viewing are from interviews of Trump son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, former chief executive for the Trump campaign Steve Bannon, former Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former White House deputy assistant Keith Schiller, and Mary McCord, a former assistant attorney general for national security who was involved in the FBI’s Russia investigation.
Among the 43 other witness interviews was testimony by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Donald Trump Jr., White House adviser Hope Hicks, longtime Trump friend and recently convicted “fixer” Roger Stone, former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Perkins Coie lawyers Michael Sussman, a former DOJ lawyer who passed along alleged details about Russian interference to former FBI general counsel James Baker, and Marc Elias, the chairman who was the Clinton campaign’s general counsel and who hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the campaign, were also among them.
