Intel hearings off – Don’s pet takes new heat
THE HOUSE Intelligence Committee has canceled all meetings for the rest of the week — including one that would have featured testimony from former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates — amid growing calls for the panel’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, to recuse himself from its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Full committee meetings were called off for the entire week after Nunes decided to cancel a public hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday, CNN reported.
Yates — whom Trump fired in February after she said the Justice Department would not defend his original travel ban — had been scheduled to testify before the committee this week about possible links between Russia and Trump’s campaign, The Washington Post reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether her scheduled testimony contributed to Nunes’ decision to cancel this week’s hearings, but the Trump White House tried to block Yates from testifying before the committee previously, The Post reported.
According to the paper, Trump’s Justice Department notified Yates earlier this month that it felt the bulk of her potential testimony should be disallowed from a congressional panel, citing executive privilege rules.
Yates served as a deputy attorney general under former President Barack Obama and was kept on by Trump in the first weeks of his administration before Jeff Sessions was confirmed.
During her brief tenure under Trump, she was part of the investigation into his short-lived national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired after misrepresenting that his contact with the Russian ambassador before the inauguration.
In a March 23 letter released Tuesday, Yates’ lawyer said she had been prepared to testify and would “not disclose any classified information” or “any information that she believes could interfere with any ongoing criminal intelligence investigations.”
The next day, a Justice Department lawyer wrote back, saying that Yates conversations would be “likely covered by the presidential communications privilege and possibly the deliberative process privilege.”
The White House dismissed the Post's story as “entirely false,” claiming the Trump administration had nothing to do with Nunes’ decision to cancel this week’s hearing.
“I hope she testifies, I look forward to it,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during his daily briefing. “If they choose to move forward, we have no problem with her testifying.”
When asked if there had been “any pressure from White House” on Nunes to “call off the hearing,” Spicer replied, “No.”
Nunes’ relationship with the administration he’s supposed to be investigating has been called into question since it was revealed he visited the White House grounds last week, one day before privately briefing Trump on new classified intelligence about possible surveillance of Trump Tower by former President Barack Obama.
He has yet to share that information with his committee.
Democrats have called on him to step aside from the probe — and Tuesday a House Republican, Rep. Walter Jones, did as well.
Nunes has rejected calls to recuse himself and did so again Tuesday, saying to reporters, “why would I?”