Ahead of a House Intelligence Committee vote on Monday to release Michael Cohen’s closed-door testimony from earlier this year, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., warned they may contain classified information.
The Democrat-led panel went on to vote by a 12-7 margin to release the February and March transcripts, after which Nunes told a reporter, “You guys are sad, sad, sad.”
The release of a transcript of that meeting explains his disappointment.
Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., opened the meeting by defending the vote. “The release of Mr. Cohen’s transcripts is an important step toward promoting the committee’s goal of transparency, where appropriate, and will assist the public’s understanding of the interplay between the President’s business interests and political aspirations and actions, both during the campaign and during the Trump Presidency,” he said.
Schiff also noted the transcripts of 53 interviews that the House Intelligence Committee voted last fall to release from its Russia investigation are still under review by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for classification. He said committee staff have been in negotiations to speed up that process and hopes they will be ready for public release soon.
Nunes, the top Republican on the panel, said he also wants those 53 transcripts out but noted that in their slow review, the ODNI identified classified information in several transcripts.
“The majority is suddenly rushing to publish these transcripts — without an ODNI classification review — after having done nothing with them for approximately 3 months,” he said. “Although the ODNI review process has been unbearably slow, its preliminary review of the committee’s 53 transcripts has identified classified information in nine transcripts that were previously marked unclassified, including Mr. Cohen’s October 2017 transcript.”
“The committee is not an original classification authority and is in no position to determine whether certain redactions made to these transcripts will properly protect sources and methods,” he added. “Therefore, the only reason I see for not sending these transcripts to the ODNI would be for the majority to advance a partisan agenda. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no today.”
Schiff shot down GOP concerns, as well as a motion to delay the Cohen transcripts release for an ODNI classification review, saying such a review was unnecessary.
Schiff said Cohen never had access to classified information or government clearances. The Cohen transcripts and exhibits were “carefully reviewed by the committee’s security director and staff, and all sensitive information has been redacted,” he said. Schiff also noted that a certain section in the October 2017 transcript that has tentative redactions from the intelligence community was similarly redacted in the latest transcripts “in an abundance of caution.”
The transcripts released on Monday show Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, told the committee that Trump attorney Jay Sekulow instructed him to lie to lawmakers in 2017 about when negotiations to erect a Trump Tower in Moscow had ended.
