House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., issued requests to interview former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
Committee sources confirmed to Politico that the letters of request were sent Friday and Monday for the three high-profile witnesses.
The letters request each witness to arrange a time as soon as possible to testify in the investigation into FBI and Justice Department actions in 2016 and 2017.
Co-founder of Fusion GPS Glenn Simpson, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former DOJ deputy counterintelligence chief Richard Scott, and former FBI official Bill Sweney are among the other witnesses who received requests to testify.
Democrats claim the Republicans on the committee deceived them by arranging the interviews, saying that they were not informed about the requests until they were already sent, Politico notes.
“This is more than just a bad habit,” Daniel Schwarz, spokesman for Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said. “The Republican Majority are representing to potential witnesses that we are party to these communications — but, time after time, that has just proved untrue.”
Republicans included Democrats in on the email requests, but sources say they were not informed before the request was already sent.
