House Intelligence Committee Democrats teased possible documentation of ex-FBI Director James Comey’s conversations with President Trump when they released a “status report” on Tuesday about their panel’s Russia investigation.
The 21-page document, shared by Ranking Member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., on Twitter, makes their case about why they think the majority party acted “prematurely” when they announced the termination of the probe one day prior and reached the conclusion that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign. The status report said the minority party will be issuing an “interim report” at an as-of-yet undisclosed date. It will lay out “the facts that we know to date and identify what significant investigative steps remain, especially with respect to the issues of collusion and obstruction of justice.”
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee just released a status report to share with the American people the work left undone in the Russia investigation when the Majority decided to shut it down.
Our work will continue — there’s a lot left to do: https://t.co/N1ixXllC1D
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) March 13, 2018
The “status report” document also provided a “partial” list of key witnesses the Democrats still want to hear from — something which Schiff has advertised in the past in the face of GOP opposition — as well as document production requests.
Minority Status of the Russia Investigation With Appendices by Danny Chaitin on Scribd
One of the notable claims in the Democratic summary, the minority party said it has “good faith reason to believe that the White House does in fact possess such documentation memorializing President Trump’s conversations with [FBI] Director [James] Comey.” Last year, Trump fired Comey, who was leading the federal Russia inquiry, a move that reportedly prompted special counsel Robert Mueller to look for possible obstruction of justice.
Trump himself teased last summer that there might be “tapes” of his conversations with Comey, but later denied there were any recordings. In response to Trump’s tease, Comey famously said, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” while testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017.
Comey is on the verge of a media blitz. His book, titled “A Higher Loyalty,” will hit shelves April 17 and has a number of high-profile interviews lined up.
The former FBI director has made waves since his termination, as it was revealed Comey memorialized several encounters he had with Trump in a series of memos. In one memo, Comey detailed how the president pressured him to end the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In another, Comey recalled how Trump demanded loyalty from him. A federal judge ruled last month that Comey’s memos would not be released to the public.
Over the course of the last year, the House Intelligence Committee interviewed more than 70 witnesses as part of the investigation, the last one being President Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski last week.
House Intelligence Republicans, led by Mike Conaway of Texas, who has formally run the committee’s probe, released a one-page summary of its upcoming report on the Trump-Russia affair on Monday — and divulged its main conclusion: That they discovered “no evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. The summary also disagreed with a past U.S. intelligence report that concluded Russian meddlers sought to favor Trump. The Republican bloc was not unanimous, as a top member of the panel, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina disagreed with his colleagues’ conclusion on that point.
Schiff hinted that some Democratic members will continue the investigation on their own, teased future leaks to the media, and said further evidence of collusion may still yet come up in Mueller’s investigation as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s inquiry.
“In the coming weeks and months, new information will continue to be exposed through enterprising journalism, indictments by the Special Counsel, or continued investigative work by Committee Democrats and our counterparts in the Senate,” Schiff said Monday. “And each time this new information becomes public, Republicans will be held accountable for abandoning a critical investigation of such vital national importance.”
