HOUSE PANELS turn attention to Obama-era cases.
Democrats: Probes of Clinton emails, uranium deal are Russia ‘diversion’
WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday revived familiar themes from the 2016 election, starting new investigations looking back at President Barack Obama’s administration and Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails as close associates of President Donald Trump attended private hearings on Capitol Hill.
The announcements of the investigations by three GOP committees were criticized by Democrats as a “massive diversion” from congressional probes into potential coordination between the Kremlin and associates of the Trump campaign — and from two witnesses close to Trump who appeared privately before the House intelligence panel for questioning.
Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his former campaign data director, Brad Parscale, were both interviewed by the House panel privately Tuesday. Cohen’s interview lasted about six hours, while Parscale’s interview was ongoing through the afternoon.
Two lawmakers familiar with Cohen’s interview said it had been “contentious” but declined to elaborate on what was said. The lawmakers asked not to be identified because the meeting was private.
Cohen, a former executive with the Trump Organization who had been subpoenaed by the House panel earlier this year, was in talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow but ended those negotiations as Trump’s White House bid caught fire. In a statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee in August, Cohen said the proposal was “solely a real estate deal and nothing more.”
As Cohen spoke to investigators, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., held a news conference outside the room to announce a separate intelligence committee investigation into an Obama-era uranium deal.
Nunes earlier this year stepped back from the committee’s investigation into Russian election interference after criticism that he was too close to the White House. But he has continued to be involved with some aspects of it, including signing subpoenas.
Nunes’ investigation into the uranium deal will be a joint effort with the House Oversight and Government Reform panel. The oversight committee announced a second new investigation Tuesday, along with the House Judiciary Committee, into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation and the decision not to prosecute her.
California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the investigations show Republicans’ “fundamental lack of seriousness” about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
“Acting on the urging of the president who has repeatedly denied the intelligence agencies’ conclusions regarding Russian involvement in our election, they are designed to distract attention and pursue the president’s preferred goal — attacking Clinton and Obama,” Schiff said.
Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, the Republican who took over the Russia probe after Nunes stepped back, said
the uranium investigation won’t be a distraction. “I’m not involved,” he said.
Nunes and other Republicans who announced the probe said they want to know more about whether Obama’s Department of Justice was investigating the purchase of American uranium mines by a Russian-backed company in 2010. The agreement was reached while Hillary Clinton led the State Department, and some investors in the company had relationships with former President Bill Clinton and donated large amounts to the Clinton Foundation.
Trump has called the issue, which was also brought up during the campaign, “the real Russia story.” Democrats have dismissed it as widely debunked.
Separately, Nunes has also been embroiled in a legal fight with a Washington political research firm behind a dossier of unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia. Nunes signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of the firm, Fusion GPS.
A lawyer for the firm said in a statement Tuesday that the subpoena was “overly broad” and without any legitimate purposes. The matter is now before a federal judge in Washington.
On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in the dossier.
Marc Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C., firm, to conduct the research.
Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.
Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’ research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC through the law firm continued to fund Fusion GPS’ research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.
Fusion GPS gave Steele’s reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and DNC, and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele.
Trump tweeted as recently as Saturday that the Justice Department and FBI should “immediately release who paid for” the dossier.
Information for this article was contributed by Mary Clare Jalonick, Chad Day, Eric Tucker and Kevin Freking of The Associated Press and by Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett and Rosalind S. Helderman of