The top members of the House Intelligence Committee say they’ll interview witnesses in their Russia investigation in a manner that they dictate, not in response to requests from third parties, in this case, Carter Page.
“Mr. Conaway and I have agreed to review relevant documents before interviewing witnesses, as you would expect in a comprehensive investigation,” ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a committee release. “And while we anticipate interviews to begin shortly, we have agreed that the pace of those interviews will be dictated by the needs of the investigation and not the preferences of outside parties.”
The statement from the committee was in response to tweets from the president, but also reports that Page, who briefly worked as an adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016, was complaining to the committee that they weren’t moving fast enough to take his volunteer testimony.
Not long after those reports, President Trump weighed in on Twitter, saying in combined tweets, “So now it is reported that the Democrats, who have excoriated Carter Page about Russia, don’t want him to testify. He blows away their case against him & now wants to clear his name by showing ‘the false or misleading testimony by James Comey, John Brennan… Witch Hunt!”
The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that Page had sent a new letter to the committee on Memorial Day that said, “In the interest of finally providing the American people with some accurate information at long last, I hope that we can proceed with this straight dialogue soon.”
Along with four other individuals, Page has been at the center of the “collusion” theories from Democrats, as the Russia investigations have proceeded. And according to press reports, the FBI successfully obtained a FISA warrant to monitor Page beginning in the late summer of 2016. Part of the justification for that warrant came from a “dossier” compiled by a former British intelligence official who was assembling the materials for opposition research use by political opponents of Trump.
