Dems demand documents

House Dems demand documents on Trump's communications with Putin

By ANDREW DESIDERIO

Three key House chairmen on Monday formally asked the White House and the State Department for documents and witness interviews related to President Donald Trump’s communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The leaders of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees are giving White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo until March 15 to turn over “all documents and communications, regardless of form and classification, that refer or relate to any communications between President Trump and President Putin, including in-person meetings and telephone calls.”

They are also demanding that the White House and the State Department make employees with knowledge of the Trump-Putin talks available for interviews with the committees.

The joint request from Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel and Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings comes as Democrats continue to flex their investigative muscles under their new House majority, with a focus on Trump’s posture toward the Kremlin.

House Democrats view the issue as a top priority as they continue to launch sweeping investigations into Trump and his administration. Schiff’s panel has already reopened its Russia investigation, with a focus on whether foreign actors have “leverage” over Trump and whether the president has acted in ways that further “the Russian government’s interests.”

The chairmen have focused their efforts in particular on Trump’s private meeting with Putin in Helsinki last July. Only translators were present for the presidents’ sit-down, and Trump sent shock waves through the intelligence community when he publicly sided with Putin’s denials of Moscow’s interference in the 2016 elections.

But Democrats’ vow to learn more about Trump’s conversations with Putin came after The Washington Post reported that Trump went to great lengths to conceal notes and other information detailing those one-on-one talks.

“These allegations, if true, raise profound national security, counterintelligence, and foreign policy concerns, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing active measures campaign to improperly influence American elections,” the chairmen wrote in separate letters to Mulvaney and Pompeo.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A State Department spokesperson said: “We will work cooperatively with the committees and seek to be as timely and responsive as possible to their requests for information.”

Schiff, Engel and Cummings sent a separate letter to Mulvaney last month requesting information about Trump’s compliance with record-keeping laws. The chairmen said Mulvaney never responded, and “as a result, we are now expanding our investigation.”

Last month, Schiff and Engel took their first real steps to force the president to release information about his private talks with Putin when they began active consultations with House general counsel Douglas Letter about the best legal way to get the information. The Trump administration is expected to vehemently fight back against the effort.

Democrats have not ruled out issuing subpoenas, and last year some party leaders said Marina Gross — the State Department translator who was present for the Trump-Putin meetings — should testify in public and share her notes with lawmakers.