Top Dem on House intel panel targets witnesses for recall
WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee said Thursday that he wants the panel to re- i nterview Trump supporter and Blackwater security firm founder Erik Prince and serve former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with a subpoena for his complete testimony.
Rep. Adam Schiff, Calif., said he wants to determine whether Prince lied to the panel about a meeting last year in the Seychelles that evidence suggests was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin. He wants the panel to also speak with George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize the meeting in the Seychelles, as his reported version of events “is obviously at odds with” what Prince told the panel in November.
Schiff also told reporters that the panel should issue a subpoena for Lewandowski, who refused to answer questions about what he knew of President Donald Trump’s discussions.
“Witnesses don’t get to pick and choose when it comes to very relevant testimony to our investigation,” Schiff said.
But Republicans on the committee do not appear to share Schiff’s urgency, either to subpoena Lewandowski or to hold additional interviews with Nader and Prince. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, who is running the panel’s Russia probe, declined to comment Thursday about whether he would call Nader or Prince for an interview.
Nader has been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.
They have interviewed a witness who said a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Russian Direct Investment Fund chief Kirill Dmitriev, brokered by the United Ar- ab Emirates, was set up so that the incoming Trump administration and the Russian government could discuss U.S.-Russian relations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Prince, who is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ brother, told the House intelligence committee that he had met Dmitriev in the Seychelles by chance, and that he was not representing the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Trump’s former campaign chairman pleaded not guilty to tax and fraud charges in federal court in Virginia on Thursday, as he appeared before a judge in the second criminal case brought against him by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
During the hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Judge T.S. Ellis put Paul Manafort on home confinement, requiring him to wear a GPS monitoring device, and set a trial for July 10.