requests relate directly to investigative threads essential to determining the extent of Russia’s election interference and are indispensable to a comprehensive investigation.
Appendix D outlines more than 15 persons and entities for which the Committee believes compulsory process for appearance and/or document production to the Committee is necessary. Included are witnesses who have refused to appear; who have invoked a nonexistent privilege to avoid pertinent testimony or who have simply refused to answer questions because the answers may be adverse to the interests of the President or his campaign; who have not produced any documentation; or whose production was insufficient and for whom we have a reasonable basis to believe that they possess documents responsive to the Committee’s investigation. This list includes, among others: Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks, Attorney General Sessions, Erik Prince, and the White House. The Committee must also initiate a contempt process to compel Stephen Bannon to testify to the Committee fully and without constraints.
In consideration of the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigative equities, the Committee also has deferred interviewing Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos, but these interviews will be essential to a complete understanding of the issues of collusion and obstruction of justice. To conduct a legitimate investigation, the Committee would need to interview these individuals, whether or not they have reached plea agreements or are the subject of criminal indictments. For example, Mr. Flynn specifically informed the Committee via his attorney on June 7, 2017 that he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against selfincrimination; the Committee did not demand his appearance, as a result. In light of Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea, the Committee should revisit his appearance and seek to negotiate his testimony. The Committee also ought to interview other individuals who may be of investigative interest to the Special Counsel, reportedly such as George Nader and Simona Mangiante.
Open hearings are also an integral component of the Committee’s investigation and have allowed the public to hear from FBI Director James Comey (prior to his termination), former CIA Director John Brennan, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, and senior executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google about key aspects of Russia’s active measures campaign. Given the repeated warnings from the Intelligence Community and others that the Russians are seeking to reprise their 2016 operation in this year’s midterm elections, the Committee should have held open hearings on election security to clarify the extent of Russia’s intrusion into our election systems, highlight vulnerabilities in our elections infrastructure, and identify the technical and other solutions necessary to protect our country.
Conducting a thorough and impartial investigation of these matters has been a challenging undertaking that has been made much more so by the Majority’s concerted efforts, at the behest of the White House, to undermine our work and that of the FBI and Special Counsel. For our part, the HPSCI Democrats remain fully committed to conducting this investigation as originally envisioned, leaving no stone unturned in determining the facts of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and the steps we need to take to ensure the future integrity of our democratic process. To the best of our ability, we will continue to do so, until such time as the Congress once again lives up to its oversight responsibilities. The American people expect and deserve no less.
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