Lewandowski to Face Off With Democrats Over Trump Obstruction
Lewandowski to Face Off With Democrats Over Trump Obstruction
(Bloomberg) -- Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, will appear for what promises to be a contentious public hearing Tuesday as Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee grill him about obstruction of justice allegations.
Even before the hearing, White House lawyers sought to limit how far lawmakers can go in the four hours of questioning they plan, some of it centering on Trump’s alleged efforts to obstruct Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
The White House counsel’s office notified the committee late Monday that Lewandowski is forbidden from discussing confidential conversations he had with Trump, aside from what was already made public in Mueller’s report. This restriction is unusual since Lewandowski never worked in the executive branch.
“This is a shocking and dangerous assertion of executive privilege and absolute immunity,” Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement Monday. “The President would have us believe that he can willfully engage in criminal activity and prevent witnesses from testifying before Congress -- even if they did not actually work for him or his administration.”
For Lewandowski, who’s weighing a 2020 bid for a Senate seat from New Hampshire, Tuesday’s televised appearance under subpoena will be an opportunity to blast Democrats for conducting what Trump and his supporters call a “witch hunt” against the president.
In a tweet Tueesday morning, the former campaign manager encouraged people to “tune in.”
The afternoon hearing will revisit themes that frustrated Democrats and infuriated Trump for much of his first term, especially Mueller’s investigation and the White House’s almost blanket refusal to cooperate with House committees. Democrats continue to say they are building a case for possibly impeaching Trump, even as next year’s presidential election approaches.
Lewandowski plans to question why House Democrats are calling him to appear again, according to a person familiar with his opening statement. He already testified twice behind closed doors to the House Intelligence Committee, and once before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Much of that testimony has been made public.
He’s expected to emphasize that he also spoke to Mueller’s investigators as part of the Russia investigation, and that information has been made public as well.
Obstruction of Justice
Mueller’s final report cited Lewandowksi in several instances of potential obstruction of justice, including Trump’s request for him to relay a message to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to call Mueller’s probe “very unfair.” Lewandowski told Mueller he never followed through on that demand.
Mueller also said Trump asked Lewandowski to tell Sessions to announce that he was limiting Mueller’s probe to “investigating election meddling for future elections.”
Mueller explicitly said he couldn’t absolve Trump of obstructing justice, a declaration that some Democrats saw as an invitation to pick up the investigation where the special counsel’s team left off.
The hearing Tuesday will also be the first under modified rules adopted last week by committee Democrats. Nadler framed those changes as laying the ground rules for the panel’s ongoing “impeachment investigation” of Trump, a probe he has said could lead to impeachment articles being recommended to the entire House.
Under those hearing rules, members won’t be the only ones posing questions in five-minute turns that skilled witnesses can effectively filibuster. Committee staff with legal training will be given sustained time to question Lewandowski, a move that Republican committee members criticized as unnecessary.
Two other former Trump aides who did work in the White House -- former Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn and former Staff Secretary Rob Porter -- were also subpoenaed to testify at Tuesday’s hearing.
But White House Counsel Pat Cipollone notified the Judiciary Committee that they have “constitutional immunity” from compelled congressional testimony “in order to protect the prerogatives of the Office of President.”
An attorney for Porter said he won’t appear before the committee. Dearborn is also not expected to attend.
The White House previously asserted broad executive privilege to bar testimony from current and former administration officials. Mostly notable is former White House counsel Donald McGahn’s testimony, a stance Nadler is currently challenging in court. An eventual ruling in that dispute could apply to other witnesses.
To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton, Larry Liebert
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