Russia Probe Transcripts Rekindle Fight Over Early Trump Actions
Russia Probe Transcripts Released by House Panel After Delays
(Bloomberg) -- The House Intelligence Committee released thousands of pages of transcripts from previously secret witness interviews in an investigation into 2016 Russian election interference completed two years ago, rekindling partisan accusations and interpretations amid President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
The 57 transcripts from 2017 and 2018 are a parade of Trump confidants pushing back against Democratic lawmakers at every turn, declining to answer questions and saying they didn’t recall specific moments.
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner told the committee in an interview on July 25, 2017 that he had no way of knowing whether Russia’s interference affected the election results, a possibility the president has repeatedly rejected.
“The candidate ran a great campaign. He had the right message. That’s why he won,” Kushner, who’s a senior adviser to the president, said. “Whatever happened with some hacks of emails and what was released one way or the other, maybe it was determinative or not on the election results. We’ll never know.”
He added that “nobody I know of knew anything about” the hacking of Democratic emails that intelligence agencies traced to Russian operatives. “And nobody I knew of knew anything about, you know, how that information was getting to WikiLeaks to be disseminated.”
Among others whose interviews were released are Donald Trump Jr.; former Trump 2016 campaign adviser Steve Bannon; former Senator and Attorney General Jeff Sessions; and former Obama administration officials including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.
“The transcripts that we are releasing today show precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller also revealed: That the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump himself, invited illicit Russian help, made full use of that help, and then lied and obstructed the investigations in order to cover up this misconduct,” Representative Adam Schiff, the panel’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement Thursday.
‘Grab a Beer’
The Bannon transcript shows that during one of his two committee interviews he described as “unpatriotic” and unwise a June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Kushner and Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort with Russian Natalia Veselnitskaya. But he stopped short of calling it “treasonous” as he was quoted as saying in a book.
But Donald Trump Jr. compared his willingness to meet with Veselnitskaya to accepting an invitation from a friend saying, “Hey, you want to go grab a beer after work?”’
As debate over how to combat the coronavirus pandemic dominates the nation’s concerns, the transcript release was one of two events Thursday that recalled the earlier disputes over Russian interference and whether those around Trump colluded in it. Also on Thursday, the Justice Department dropped its prosecution of Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, even though he had pleaded guilty more than two years ago to lying to FBI agents.
In one of the House committee’s transcripts, James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence during President Barack Obama’s administration, said “our antenna was up certainly” for why Russia reacted mildly to sanctions imposed by the outgoing administration. He said the answer was clear when intelligence agencies learned of a conversation Flynn had with Russia’s ambassador “effectively neutering” the sanctions.
But Clapper said “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/ conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”
NCAA Game
Dan Coats, the former senator who served as director of national intelligence under Trump, said the president called and interrupted him when he was watching the final minutes of an NCAA basketball game to suggest he say that there was no evidence of collusion with Russia.
“I did not think it was appropriate to do that,” Coats said. He said he was thinking, “Here is the president of the United States sitting in an empty White House. His wife is in New York. His family is in New York. On a Saturday night, that has got to be a lonely thing to do.”
“Well, he should have flipped on and watched the NCAA Final Four and left you alone,” responded Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, who has since left Congress.
Talks With Manafort
While Trump has repeatedly downplayed his relationship with Manafort, his former campaign chairman -- saying “I didn’t know Manafort well” after the veteran Republican operative was convicted of conspiracy and tax fraud and sent to prison -- Michael Caputo, another former Trump campaign official, told a different story in his testimony.
Caputo said Trump and Manafort spoke “daily, and sometimes more” during his time leading the campaign. And, Caputo said, Kushner met every Monday morning with the campaign chairman.
The Intelligence Committee, led at the time by Representative Devin Nunes of California, concluded its investigation in 2018 with a report by the Republican majority finding no collusion between Trump’s successful presidential campaign and Russia’s efforts to meddle in the election.
Democrats sharply disagreed, and renewed conflict over the transcripts emerged after they were sent to intelligence community agencies controlled by the executive branch for declassification.
“These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests,” Schiff said in a statement.
Ric Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, said in a statement late Thursday that the House panel unanimously asked for release of the transcripts “and it’s long past time that these are released.”
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