The House Intelligence Committee will hold a meeting Friday to discuss the public release of transcripts of witness interviews conducted as part of its Russia investigation.
Set up by the order of Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the full panel will vote in a closed session to send 53 of transcripts to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that need a classification review and pending that review make them available for public release.
Included in that list are a number of Obama administration officials, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, and former White House counselor John Podesta, who went on to become chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Ex-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by President Trump last year, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, are also on the list.
A number of Trump associates and current and former officials are there as well, including: Donald Trump Jr., Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Jared Kushner, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, former White House communications director Hope Hicks, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; and President Trump’s ex-personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
Cohen, a former “fixer” for Trump, pleaded guilty last month to tax and bank fraud and to campaign finance crimes he said were at Trump’s direction.
The meeting Friday follows Nunes, R-Calif., saying recently that the transcripts should be released to the public before the 2018 midterm elections.
“If you look at a lot of the facts that are now out it’s the facts that are now out, it’s what we found on the House Intelligence Committee,” Nunes said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” earlier this month. “So we believe that the depositions that we took I think for nearly about 70 people, those need to be published and they need to be published, I think before the election … put out for the American people to review, so that they can see the work that we did and they can see all of the people that were interviewed by us and their answers to those questions.”
All told, the House Intelligence Committee interviewed 73 people for its Russia probe.
The panel released their final report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in April, concluding that there was no “collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”
Democrats on the panel accused Republicans of conducting an incomplete and misleading investigation. They have repeatedly called for the release of the transcripts, claiming they would show the majority only halfheartedly questioned witnesses.
