The Democratic chairmen of four House committees on Monday asked the Trump administration and close confidants of President Trump for documents and information about the meetings he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 and 2018.
Committees on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Government Reform all sought information about those meetings, following months of accusations from Democrats that Trump has tried to bury what happened in those talks with Putin.
The House Judiciary Committee sent out 81 letters Monday to Trump associates on a variety of issues, but many of those letters also asked for “the contents of meetings between President Trump and Vladimir Putin on July 7, 2017, Nov. 11, 2017, July 16, 2018, and Nov. 30, 2018.”
Among those receiving that request were Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, Don McGahn, Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department, the FBI and the White House. Chairman Jerry Nadler asked for those documents to be provided by March 18th.
On the same day, the Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs committees released a joint letter just hours later “requesting documents from the White House, and interviews with the White House and other Executive Office of the President personnel, related to communications between President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation.” Copies of the letter were sent to the White House and to the State Department, and said they wanted a response by March 15th.
As part of their effort, the Democratic chairmen of those three committees asked that the White House make anyone with information about the talks, including staff members, linguists, translators, and anyone who may have listened in on any calls, available to be interviewed by Congress.
It was at a press conference following the Helsinki meeting with Putin that Trump suggested he believed the Russian president over the U.S. intelligence community when it came to allegations of Russian interference in 2016.
“My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Democrats also asked for details on these conversations between Trump and Putin from the beginning of Trump’s presidency. They asked for answers on the substance of the talks, the influence that these talks had on any decision-making, the existence of any documentation of the talks, and whether efforts were made to hide or destroy such documentation.
Democrats added that they wanted to know if President Trump “destroyed records related to his conversations with President Putin in violation of the Presidential Records Act” and repeated reports alleging that Trump “seized notes pertaining to at least one meeting held with President Putin and directed at least one American interpreter not to discuss the substance of communications with President Putin with other U.S. officials.”
Democrats warned that if Trump tried to hide or destroy these records, it would “raise profound counterintelligence and foreign policy concerns, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing active measures campaign to improperly influence American elections.”
All of this comes following last week’s appearance by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, where he made a number of allegations that Democrats say they will likely use as the basis for further inquiries into Trump and his businesses.
