House calls for Trump documents
Chairman says committee to question 60 officials in obstruction probe
Declaring it’s “very clear” US President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the chairman of the House committee that would be in charge of impeachment says the panel was to request documents today from more than 60 people from Trump’s Administration, family and business as part of a rapidly expanding Russia investigation.
Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler said the House Judiciary Committee wants to review documents from the Justice Department, the President’s son Donald Trump jnr and Trump Organisation chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn also are likely targets, he said.
“We are going to initiate investigations into abuses of power, into corruption and into obstruction of justice,” Nadler said. “We will do everything we can to get that evidence.”
Asked if he believed Trump obstructed justice, Nadler said, “Yes, I do.”
Nadler isn’t calling the inquiry an impeachment investigation but said House Democrats, now in the majority, are simply doing “our job to protect the rule of law” after Republicans during the first two years of Trump’s term were “shielding the President from any proper accountability.”
“We’re far from making decisions” about impeachment, Nadler said.
In a tweet yesterday, Trump blasted anew the Russia investigation, calling it a partisan probe unfairly aimed at discrediting his win in the 2016 presidential election. “I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start — And only because I won the Election!” he wrote.
Nadler’s comments follow a bad political week for Trump. He emerged empty-handed from a high-profile summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un on denuclearisation, and Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in three days of congressional testimony, publicly characterised the President as a “con man” and “cheat”.
Newly empowered House Democrats are flexing their strength with blossoming investigations. A halfdozen House committees are now probing alleged co-ordination between Trump associates and Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election, Trump’s tax returns and possible conflicts of interest involving the Trump family business and policy-making.
Nadler’s added lines of inquiry come as special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be wrapping up his work into possible questions of Trump campaign collusion and obstruction in the Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.