Democrats presenting their impeachment report on President Trump refused to say who called to obtain and publish the call records of the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes of California.
Dan Goldman, the lawyer answering questions about an impeachment report authored by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff would not tell Republicans who called for publishing the records showing Nunes spoke to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as well as Lev Parnas, who was an associate of Giuliani and was recently indicted for breaking campaign finance laws.
“You won’t answer the question about who told the committee to check those numbers,” Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said when Goldman refused to provide the information.
Goldman told Collins he should be more concerned with whom Nunes was talking to on the calls. Democrats believe Nunes participated in a “scheme” to force out U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch so they could put more pressure on Ukraine government officials to investigate Democrats and former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I’m not going to reveal how we conducted this investigation,” Goldman told Collins when he asked who ordered the subpoenas and the publishing of Nunes’s call records.
Republicans have called the culling of the call records and the decision to publish them an abuse of power.
Collins suggested Schiff ordered the subpoenas.
“You are not being honest about this answer,” Collins said. “You know how it is. You are just not answering.”
Steve Castor, the Republican lawyer at the hearing, said Democrats issued six subpoenas, three of them to AT&T and one to Verizon, for calls related to their impeachment inquiry.
“Obviously they were trying to figure something out,” Castor said, referring to the Democrats.
Democrats have suggested they will investigate Nunes over the calls, although it’s not clear what House rule he violated, if any, in connection to them.
The call log showed an eight-minute call between Nunes and Parnas as well as calls with Giuliani. The calls took place in April.
Nunes said he did not recall talking to Parnas and was likely talking to Giuliani about the Mueller report, which was released in April.
