ALLIES OF Trump say transition team emails improperly turned over to Mueller.
Agency called amiss in giving him transition team’s emails
WASHINGTON — A group representing President Donald Trump’s transition team says a memo in the hands of the General Services Administration should have stopped the agency from turning over tens of thousands of emails to the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
A lawyer for Trump for America said in a letter to the general services agency that a cache of transition emails the agency delivered in August to Robert Mueller’s investigators was actually owned and controlled by the transition. The transition team claims it believes that a general services agency official communicated that warning in a memo to Mueller’s investigators before the special counsel took possession of the emails.
The transition group’s letter, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, asked the general services agency to find the memo under the federal Freedom of Information Act and turn it over to Trump for America. The agency provides workplaces, goods and services for other federal agencies.
Trump for America general counsel Kory Langhofer did not explain in the letter how the group was made aware that the general services memo exists, but said “it is our understanding” the document was sent in June by the agency’s top lawyer, Richard Beckler, to Mueller’s team. Beckler has since died.
“The GSA had no right to access or control the records but was simply serving as Trump for America’s records custodian,” Langhofer wrote in the letter delivered Monday. He added that the agency “unlawfully” handed over “thousands of private and privileged [presidential transition team] emails to the Special Counsel’s office, and failed to notify [Trump for America] of the production.”
Agency spokesman Pamela Dixon declined Wednesday to comment on the letter. Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel, also declined to comment, citing an earlier statement that when the counsel’s office obtains emails during its investigations, “we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”
In September, investigators for Mueller obtained tens of thousands of emails that related to 13 senior Trump transition officials. Among them was former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to FBI agents in January and is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Flynn was fired by Trump in February for misleading senior administration officials about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
Mueller so far has indicted two other Trump campaign officials, and a fourth has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Ken Nahigian, Trump for America’s executive director, said the transition made the records request to respond to the agency’s role in the “unlawful seizure of Transition documents by Mr. Mueller.”
Nahigian said the agency’s cooperation with the special counsel without the knowledge of the transition “will irreversibly chill the operations of future presidential transition teams.”
The agency in recent years has provided office space, phones and computers to presidential transition teams. After Trump’s presidential election victory in November 2016, his transition officials relied on the federal agency’s site to host and archive its electronic communications. The transition’s emails were slated for deletion after Trump’s inauguration, but the transition asked the agency to retain the records after receiving document requests from Congress last spring.
Some criminal-law experts have expressed skepticism about the transition’s claims to legal ownership of the emails, but Langhofer and other transition officials insist that Beckler had agreed with Trump for America both in phone conversations and in the sought-after memo that the emails belonged to the transition.
In a separate development, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat said Thursday that he wants to interview the president’s daughter as part of the panel’s Russia investigation, along with other witnesses whom Republicans aren’t inviting.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California said Thursday that Republicans have declined to invite many witnesses that would be valuable to the probe, including Ivanka Trump and several people who he says have additional information about a June 2016 meeting between Russians and the Trump campaign.
At the Trump Tower meeting, several Trump campaign officials met with Russian operatives under the impression that they might receive damaging information about the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. The meeting has captured the interest of congressional investigators and Mueller.
The Los Angeles Times reported last week that Ivanka Trump talked to at least two of the meeting’s participants on the way out.
“I think that if there’s credible information that Ivanka Trump had contact with any participants in that meeting, at the time of the meeting, that she should be brought in,” Schiff said.
Schiff also said Thursday that Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, is likely to meet privately with the panel. “It is my expectation he will be doing that,” he said.
A committee official familiar with the panel’s schedule has said Bannon is likely be interviewed next week, though plans are fluid.