Nunes also said on Friday that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s lawyers told the committee that he is volunteering to be interviewed, and that the panel would work with his lawyers to decide whether the interview would be open or closed to the public.
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“The counsel for Paul Manafort contacted the committee yesterday (on Thursday) to offer the committee the opportunity to interview his client”, Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters at the Capitol. Schiff called the postponement a cancellation.
Nunes made the announcement on Friday morning, adding that the committee had also asked FBI Director James Comey and NSA head Adm. Michael Rogers to return and brief the panel.
It also may mean that Nunes is just trying to make House Democrats sweat, particularly Rep. Adam Schiff, who has been out front and center, ragging on Nunes all week for telling the President about Obama’s super-secret surveillance plans before Nunes told the committee’s Democrats.
“I think he has demonstrated that there is some question about his respect for the committee”, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said Thursday. The trio of former Obama-administration appointees were set to appear for public hearings on Russian interference in the 2016 election. He also said that none of the surveillance he knew about was related to Russian Federation.
“I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition”, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said.
Nunes said the surveillance appeared to have been legal, authorized by the nation’s secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Monday’s hearing is also expected to address President Trump’s claims that the Obama administration wiretapped his phone at Trump Tower in NY during the campaign. “We know there was not a physical wiretap of Trump Tower”, Nunes said at the time.
USA intelligence agencies released a report in January assessing that Russian Federation conducted a hacking-and-influence campaign aimed at denigrating Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Schiff said Nunes had still not shown the committee the documents. Mr. Schiff wants to holding public hearings on collusion because he’s on a mission to damage the Trump Administration politically, not because he’s on a truth-seeking mission.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said that Manafort “played a very limited role in the campaign”.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates were all scheduled to testify at the hearing Tuesday. “But it’s necessary to get both of them back down here before we can move on to other issues”. They questioned whether the intelligence panel could run a credible investigation.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee want Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled a dossier about President Trump’s associat…
John Schindler, a former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, said if it turned out Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russian Federation to rig the 2016 election, he could lose his presidency.
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It was not clear if Manafort had offered to testify under oath or in a public hearing, and Nunes said those details had not been determined. “Because he can not do both”. “The chairman of house intel briefed the commander-in-chief on something that has nothing to do with the Russian Federation investigation”.
