The Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines on Wednesday to reaffirm and broaden Chairman Ron Johnson’s subpoena authority for witnesses in an inquiry into the Russia investigation.
The panel’s June business meeting had authorized subpoenas for 33 Trump-Russia figures, and after efforts by Democratic ranking member Sen. Gary Peters to throw up roadblocks, the Wednesday meeting reauthorized the subpoenas for all of them in an 8-6 vote. It also approved subpoena authorization authority for seven more possible witnesses: Cambridge professor and FBI informant Stefan Halper; Halper’s FBI handler, Stephen Somma; James Baker, the director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment; Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tashina Gauhar; former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe; top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr; and John Tefft, the United States ambassador to Russia under former President Barack Obama.
“We are here today … to overcome a ridiculous assertion by the ranking member regarding committee subpoena rules and, while we’re at it, to vote on subpoena authority for seven additional individuals based on new information,” Johnson said Wednesday. “Regarding the committee subpoena rules, Sen. Peters has raised a procedural objection based on an absurd interpretation of committee rules. According to Sen. Peters, when the committee authorized deposition subpoenas on June 4, that vote did not include the authority to actually schedule any depositions.” The Wednesday vote overcame Peters’s objection.
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, lamented that “the witness that Sen. Peters encouraged to ignore a committee subpoena is former State Department employee Jonathan Winer,” who “played a key role in disseminating the Steele dossier to officials within the State Department” and “was also one of only two witnesses who refused to cooperate with the Department of Justice inspector general’s review.”
That August subpoena came after a Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference revealed that after British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to “either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the Department of State or return them.”
“So, I destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him,” Winer said, referring to information on his personal devices. Winer claimed Steele “didn’t want [the Russian intelligence services] deconstructing his network.” Before the dossier, between late 2013 and January 2016, Steele provided at least 110 reports on Ukraine and Russia to Winer.
Democrats, including Peters, have consistently opposed the committee’s inquiry, arguing it is being conducted for political reasons.
“This is our third business meeting on a very partisan investigation, yet we continue to face an unprecedented public health and economic emergency,” Peters said. “Almost 200,000 Americans have died during this pandemic, and nearly 40 million Americans have lost their jobs. I’m disappointed that our committee is once again meeting to discuss the authorization of subpoenas instead — let me say that again — instead of the serious challenges facing Americans. Today, we’re voting on an unprecedented 40 subpoenas to further the chairman’s investigations into Crossfire Hurricane and the unmasking of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s name.”
A report on the FBI’s Russia investigation released by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December said the bureau concealed significant information provided by Halper, a confidential human source who was dubbed “Source 2.” Halper worked as an FBI informant in 2016 and recorded discussions with at least three Trump 2016 campaign members: campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, campaign associate Carter Page, and campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis. While Halper worked for the FBI, he received thousands of dollars from the Pentagon, ostensibly, for academic research.
When Halper’s role as an FBI informant was leaked to the media in May 2018, it led to accusations from President Trump and Republicans that the Obama administration used Halper as part of an illegal effort to spy on the Trump campaign, dubbed “Spygate” and later “Obamagate” by allies of Trump. The recorded denials of Russian collusion made by Page and Papadopoulos were never passed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The Wednesday meeting agenda summed up the authorizations as a “motion to authorize the Chairman to issue notices for taking depositions, subpoenas for records, and subpoenas for testimony, to individuals relating to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation; the DOJ Inspector General’s review of that investigation; and the ‘unmasking’ of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign, transition team, and Trump administration. But Johnson pulled a “motion to authorize the Chairman to issue subpoenas for testimony and notices for taking depositions to individuals relating to Burisma Holdings and actual or apparent conflicts of interest with U.S.-Ukraine policy.”
After the Wednesday vote, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and the only Republican senator to vote for an article of impeachment against Trump, affirmed his support for the investigation but also issued a warning about delving into Obama’s foreign policy in Ukraine.
“The Biden-Burisma investigation … I think, from the outset, had the earmarks of a political exercise, and I’m fearful that comments made in the media recently have only confirmed that perspective,” Romney said. “Obviously, it’s the provenance of campaigns and political parties, opposition research, the media to carry out political endeavors, to learn about or dust up one’s opponent, but it’s not the legitimate role of government for Congress or taxpayer expense to be used in an effort to damage political opponents, and so, therefore, I am pleased that our votes today do not include additional authorizations relating to the, I’ll call it, ‘Biden-Burisma investigation.’”
Johnson’s committee voted along party lines in May to approve a subpoena for Blue Star Strategies, a firm that represented Burisma Holdings. The Ukrainian energy company became a hot-button issue last year when Trump seemed to reference that it was the focus of the whistleblower complaint that led to the House impeachment investigation during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After Zelensky expressed interest in purchasing anti-tank weaponry, Trump asked Zelensky “to do us a favor though” by looking into a CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and possible Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. Trump also urged Zelensky to investigate “the other thing,” referring to allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden.
The Democratic-led House impeached Trump in December, but he was acquitted in the Republican-led Senate trial in February.
Austin Altenburg, a spokesman for Johnson, told the Washington Examiner: “This is Congress. Everything here has implications for politics and elections. The Committee is expressly authorized to investigate conflicts of interest, and its investigation into Burisma and U.S.-Ukraine policy began well before the Democratic nominee for president had been decided. The American people have the right to know what did and did not happen.”
Romney said Wednesday that he still supported a narrow inquiry into the Trump-Russia investigation.
“With regards to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, I think it’s also important because — since this has such obvious political implications — that the committee’s investigation focus on the specific wrongdoing alleged by the inspector general’s report,” the Utah Republican said. “My vote today essentially is a reaffirmation of the subpoena authorization that was already approved by the committee with my support on June 4, and I will continue that support as long as it does not fall into the realm of rank political undertaking.”
