RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

White House says it did not interfere with plans to testify.

The White House denied charges by a lawyer for former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who says the administration tried to block her from testifying about ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for former deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in letters last week that the Trump administration was trying to limit her testimony at congressional hearings focused on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The House intelligence committee chairman later canceled the meeting.

In the letters, attorney David O’Neil said he understood the Justice Department was invoking “further constraints” on testimony Yates could provide at a committee hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday. He said the department’s position was that all actions she took as deputy attorney general were “client confidences” that could not be disclosed without written approval.

“We believe that the Department’s position in this regard is overbroad, incorrect, and inconsistent with the Department’s historical approach to the congressional testimony of current and former senior officials,” O’Neil wrote in a March 23 letter to Justice Department official Samuel Ramer.

The White House said Tuesday it did not interfere with Yates’ plans to testify.

“We have no problem with her testifying, plain and simple,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.

Yates’ lawyer said she still intended to testify and would not disclose any classified information. A requirement that she not discuss even non-classified material “is particularly untenable given that multiple senior administration officials have publicly described the same events,” O’Neil said.

House committee chairman Dev in Nun es announced he was canceling the meeting on March 24, days after the committee’s first hearing in which FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the bureau was investigating ties between associates of President Donald Trump and Russia.

Cancelling the hearing was one of several moves that have sparked outrage from Democrats on the committee. The typically bipartisan panel has been torn by disputes over Nunes’ ties to Trump’s campaign and questions about whether he can lead a probe independent of White House influence.

On Tuesday, Nunes rebuffed calls to step aside from the investigation.

“It’s the same thing as always around this place — a lot of politics, people get heated, but I’m not going to involve myself with that,” he said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan continued to express confidence in Nunes, saying there was no need for the chairman to resign.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee — which is also investigating the Russiaties— said WhiteHouse meddling in Congress’ Russia investigations is not helping to “remove the cloud that increasingly is getting darker over the administration.”