House inquiry’s files to be aired

Trump Jr.’s interview on list of Russia-probe transcripts

WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee voted Friday to release almost all of the transcripts of interviews it conducted as part of an investigation into Russian election meddling the panel concluded earlier this year.

Among those to be released are interviews with President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner;

his longtime spokesman, Hope Hicks; and his former bodyguard Keith Schiller. The committee also will release dozens of other transcripts of interviews with officials from President Barack Obama’s administration and numerous Trump associates, including Roger Stone, currently the subject of a grand

jury investigation.

Panel Democrats have been clamoring for the release of the Russia investigation documents for months, but it was only in recent weeks that the panel’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., also began to opine that the transcripts should be made public, adding that it should be done before the midterm elections.

The interviews form the basis for the GOP-authored report released this year that concluded there was no coordination between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election. Committee Democrats, who voted against approving the report, have disputed its findings. They say the investigation was shut down too quickly and that the committee didn’t interview enough witnesses or gather enough evidence.

Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who led the investigation in place of Nunes, said he “wanted to declassify or release as much of the underlying data as we could so that not only would they have my conclusion, but they could look at what I was looking at to make up their own mind.”

But Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, said some of the most important transcripts are still being withheld.

“They’re trying to bury them as long as they can,” Schiff said of Republicans, who rejected Democrats’ effort to release all of the transcripts privately Friday morning. Democrats ultimately supported the final vote to release the transcripts from all but five of the interviews conducted during the probe.

The five missing transcripts include the interviews the panel conducted privately with three former spy chiefs, former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers, and former CIA Director John Brennan. A transcript of the panel’s interview with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will be included with the transcripts released, pending the intelligence community’s redactions.

The panel also elected not to release the transcripts from interviews with two sitting members of Congress, Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who served as the head of the Democratic National Committee when its emails were hacked, and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who had various contacts with Russian officials. Schiff said Friday that Wasserman Schultz had no objections to her interview being made public.

Rohrabacher also said Friday that he hasn’t objected to the release of his. Asked if he would agree to its release now, Rohrabacher said, “I’ll think about it.”

The vote sets the stage for the release of 53 transcripts as soon as next week, provided the intelligence community does not take issue with releasing the information from the interviews. Both Democratic and Republican members of the committee have said that there is not much classified information contained in the interviews, and that redacting the transcripts should be a straightforward matter.

But Republicans elected nonetheless to send every transcript to the intelligence community for its review, over the objections of Democrats, Schiff said, and are expected to release the transcripts en masse once all documents have been redacted or cleared.

Schiff added that committee Democrats would likely release additional transcripts they conducted independently of panel Republicans around the time the other ones are made public. He complained, however, that committee Republicans voted down an effort from Democrats to turn over a complete, unredacted set of its interview transcripts to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, including any classified information.

“We have suspicions that people testified before our committee falsely and committed perjury,” Schiff said. “The special counsel is in the best position to determine on the basis of the additional information he has who might have perjured themselves.”

But Conaway said Mueller hasn’t asked for access to the transcripts, and Republicans don’t want to be accused of trying to “skew” the investigation or obstruct justice by sending him materials he didn’t request.

“He’ll ask for it if he wants to. He’s a big boy,” Conaway said, noting the special counsel will be able to review them once they’re public.

Conaway and Schiff said they didn’t know how long the review would take or when the transcripts would be released to the public.