Declaring it is “very clear” US President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the chairman of the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary said the panel yesterday would request documents from more than 60 people from Trump’s administration, family and business as part of a rapidly expanding Russia investigation.
US Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, said the House Judiciary Committee wants to review documents from the US Department of Justice, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn also are likely targets, he said on ABC television’s This Week on Sunday.
“We are going to initiate investigations into abuses of power, into corruption and into obstruction of justice,” Nadler said. “We will do everything we can to get that evidence.”
Asked if he believed Donald Trump obstructed justice, Nadler said, “Yes, I do.”
Nadler is not calling the inquiry an impeachment investigation, but said House Democrats, now in the majority, are simply doing “our job to protect the rule of law” after Republicans during the first two years of Trump’s term were “shielding the president from any proper accountability.”
“We’re far from making decisions” about impeachment, he said.
In a tweet on Sunday, Trump blasted anew the Russia investigation, calling it a partisan probe unfairly aimed at discrediting his win in the 2016 presidential election.
“I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start - And only because I won the Election!” he wrote.
Newly empowered Democrats in the House are flexing their strength with blossoming investigations. A half-dozen committees are now probing alleged coordination between Donald Trump’s associates and Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election, his tax returns and possible conflicts of interest involving the Trump family business and policymaking.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform, for instance, set a deadline of yesterday for the White House to turn over documents related to security clearances after the New York Times reported that the president ordered officials to grant his son-in-law, Jared Kushner’s, clearance over the objections of national security officials.
Nadler’s added lines of inquiry also come as US special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be wrapping up his work into possible questions of Trump campaign collusion and obstruction in the Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also on This Week, accused House Democrats of prejudging Trump as part of a query based purely on partisan politics.
“I think Congressman Nadler decided to impeach the president the day the president won the election,” the Republican said. “Listen to exactly what he said. He talks about impeachment before he even became chairman and then he says, ‘you’ve got to persuade people to get there.’ There’s nothing that the president did wrong.”
“Show me where the president did anything to be impeached... Nadler is setting the framework now that the Democrats are not to believe the Mueller report,” McCarthy said.
Nadler said that his committee would seek to review the Mueller report, but stressed the investigation “goes far beyond collusion.”
He pointed to what he considered several instances of obstruction of justice by the president, including the “1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a ‘witch hunt’” as well the president’s abrupt firing of then-FBI director James Comey in 2017.
“It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice,” Nadler said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat has kept calls for impeachment at bay by insisting that Mueller must be allowed to finish his work and present his findings — although it is unclear if the White House would allow its full release.
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