subpoenas – Capitol Hill Blue

As angry Trump rants, calm Democrats subpoena

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019

President Donald Trump in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Agitated and angry, President Donald Trump squared off against House Democrats, packing his increasingly aggressive impeachment defense with name-calling and expletives. Quietly but just as resolutely, lawmakers expanded their inquiry, promising a broad new subpoena for documents and witnesses.

Democratic leaders put the White House on notice that the wide-ranging subpoena would be coming for information about Trump’s actions in the Ukraine controversy, the latest move in an impeachment probe that’s testing the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. They said they’d be going to court if necessary.

Amid the legal skirmishing, Wednesday was a day of verbal fireworks.

The president complained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was handing out subpoenas “like cookies,” railed against a government whistleblower as “vicious” and assailed the news media as corrupt and the “enemy.” All that alongside a presidential tweetstorm punctuated with an accusation that congressional Democrats waste time and money on “BULL—-.”

Pelosi said Democrats had no choice but to take on the most “solemn” of constitutional responsibilities to put a check on executive power after the national security whistleblower’s complaint that recently came to light. The administration and Congress are on a collision course unseen in a generation after the whistleblower exposed a July phone call the Republican president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump pressed for an investigation of Democratic political rival Joe Biden and his family.

“We take this to be a very sad time” for the American people and the country, Pelosi said. “Impeaching the president isn’t anything to be joyful about.”

Standing beside her, intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff accused Trump of “an incitement to violence” with his attacks on the unnamed whistleblower, who is provided anonymity and other protections under federal law. He said the investigation is proceeding “deliberately” but with a sense of “urgency.”

Unlike Trump, Schiff never raised his voice but said firmly: “We’re not fooling around here.”

Pelosi, in a “Good Morning America” interview that will air Thursday, said Trump is “scared” of the impeachment inquiry and the arguments that can be made against him.

Democrats are now talking of basing an impeachment charge of obstruction on the White House’s slow-walking of documents and testimony _ administration actions that echo the months of resisting Congress in its other investigations into special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and Trump’s business dealings.

Ahead of the new subpoena, the chairmen of three House committees accused the administration of “flagrant disregard” of previous requests for documents and witnesses and said that refusal could be considered an impeachable offense.

The standoff took on a defiant tone this week when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he would not stand for Democrats “bullying” his employees into appearing before the congressional committees, even as he acknowledged that he, too, had been among those U.S. officials listening on the line during the Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine leader.

Pompeo’s admission is complicating his situation, and House leaders now consider him a “witness” to Trump’s interaction with Ukraine.

One former State Department official, Kurt Volker, a former special envoy to Ukraine, will appear Thursday for a closed-door interview with House investigators. He is said to be eager to tell his side of the story. That’s ahead of next week’s deposition of ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Maria “Masha” Yovanovitch.

The circumstances of Yovanovitch’s sudden recall from Ukraine are the subject of conspiracy speculation, and the State Department’s Inspector General Michael Steve Linick sought an “urgent” meeting Wednesday to brief staff of several committees.

During that private session, Linick told them he received a packet of materials from the State Department’s Counsel T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, according to one person granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door session.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said the package contained information from debunked conspiracy theories about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election. Trump has long pursued those theories, a topic he discussed with Zelenskiy in the phone call that sparked the impeachment inquiry.

It was unclear where the package originated, but it was in a White House envelope and included folders from Trump hotels, according to another person familiar with the briefing, a Democrat. That person said the White House sent the envelope to Pompeo and it contained notes from interviews that took place in the New York City office of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani with various Ukrainians about the debunked conspiracies.

“It raises more questions than it answers,” said Raskin.

Brechbuhl has also been called to give a deposition to the House.

Trump, in appearances in the Oval Office and a joint press conference with the president of Finland, displayed an unusual show of anger as he defended what he has called his “perfect” phone call with Zelenskiy and decried the impeachment inquiry.

He demanded that a reporter pressing him on his dealings with Ukraine move on, labeling the journalist “corrupt.” Earlier in the day he said even though he popularized the phrase “fake news,” he now preferred to say “corrupt” news. “This is a hoax,” Trump said.

Later he called himself, as he has before, a “very stable genius” who always watches what he says in conversations.

Trump has tweeted in recent days that he wants to “find out about” the whistleblower and question him or her, though the person’s identity is protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act.

Schiff’s spokesman acknowledged that the whistleblower had gone to the intelligence committee before filing the formal complaint but said the staff advised the person to contact an inspector general and seek counsel, and at no point did the committee review or receive the complaint in advance.

Trump suggested, without any evidence, that Schiff “probably helped write” the whistleblower’s complaint. The whistleblower’s lawyers said the person had never met or spoken with Schiff about the matter.

The new subpoena coming Friday from House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings will be directed toward acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and request 13 separate batches of documents concerning the July call and related matters. The call came against the backdrop of a $250 million foreign aid package for Ukraine that was being readied by Congress but stalled by Trump.

The whistleblower alleged in August that the White House tried to “lock down” Trump’s July 25 phone call with the new Ukrainian president because it was worried about the contents being leaked to the public. The acting director of national intelligence eventually made the complaint public.

In recent days, it has been disclosed that the administration similarly tried to restrict information about Trump’s calls with other foreign leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, by moving memos onto a highly classified computer system.

In Russia, Putin said scrutiny over the phone call showed that Trump’s adversaries are using “every excuse” to attack him.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Rome, Angela Charlton in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Laurie Kellman, Zeke Miller, Jonathan Lemire, Alan Fram and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Congress confronts Trump with legal actions

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., joins Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., right, at a news conference as House Democrats move on depositions in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, at the Capitol Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Donald Trump is rapidly confronting a decision at the core of House Democrats’ nascent impeachment inquiry: Should he comply with congressional demands and risk disclosure of embarrassing information? Or should he delay and possibly deepen his legal and political predicament?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, the intelligence committee chairman, issued a blunt warning to the president Wednesday, threatening to make White House defiance of a congressional request for testimony and documents potential grounds for an article of impeachment.

With the prospect of new subpoenas coming as soon as Friday, Trump’s official policy of deliberate non-cooperation, and his view of executive power, could be tested quickly.

“We want to make it abundantly clear that any effort by (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo), by the president or anyone else to interfere with the Congress’ ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstruction of the lawful functions of Congress,” Schiff said in a Wednesday news conference.

For his part, Trump maintained, “Well, I always cooperate,” without explicitly saying he would comply with the request. He then derided Pelosi, saying she “hands out subpoenas like they’re cookies.”

The White House strategy toward congressional oversight has often been open scorn. The Republican president’s aides have ignored document requests and subpoenas, invoked executive privilege _ so far as to argue that executive privilege extends to informal presidential advisers who’ve never held White House roles _ and all but dared Democrats to hold them in contempt.

As the impeachment inquiry accelerates, the White House’s stonewalling appears likely to continue.

“This is a hoax,” Trump said, immediately after professing his commitment to cooperation. He then launched into a diatribe on the impeachment inquiry, which has centered on his request for Ukraine’s president to assist in digging up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. “This is the greatest hoax. This is just a continuation of what’s been playing out since my election.”

In public and private, Trump has angrily dismissed the impeachment investigation as an illegitimate, purely partisan effort to topple him, according to three White House officials not authorized to speak about private conversations. And he praised Pompeo’s initial combative response to the Democrats’ requests this week, one of the officials said.

It’s part of an emerging political and legal strategy informed by Trump’s time in the two-year crucible of the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

The president’s first team of lawyers was inclined to cooperate with Robert Mueller, believing it would help bring the investigation to a swift conclusion. But once Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani took over, they largely ceased cooperation, attacked Mueller’s integrity and shielded Trump from testifying in person. They believe the moves inoculated the president legally and solidified his standing politically. Giuliani and Sekulow remain part of the president’s outside counsel.

Trump’s legal team privately cheered as the Mueller investigation bled into its third year in 2019 _ in part because of their stall tactics on whether Trump would consent to the Mueller interview. Now they are bent on ensuring the current probe is anything but the quick process desired by Democrats, who are wary of its impact on the 2020 presidential campaign.

“We’re not fooling around here,” Schiff said. “We don’t want this to drag on for months and months, which appears to be the administration’s strategy.”

White House allies argue that the Democratic demands are overly broad and raise issues of executive privilege and immunity, jeopardizing the longstanding interests of the co-equal branch of government. But Democrats are making the precise counter-argument, that Trump is claiming superiority of the executive branch over the legislative in a manner that defies the Constitution.

It’s a foot-dragging response that also serves Trump’s political interests _ he has hoped to use impeachment as a rallying cry for his supporter base in the election year.

Democrats have sought to use their declared impeachment investigation to bolster their case to access all sorts of documents from the administration, most recently secret grand jury information that underpinned Mueller’s report. And where courts have generally required congressional oversight requests to demonstrate a legitimate legislative purpose, impeachment requests could be wide-ranging.

Some Republicans have raised doubts that the unilateral declaration of impeachment would grant the House those powers. Trump allies have questioned the form of the impeachment investigation, which, unlike those into Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, was begun without a formal vote of the House.

They suggest that without a formal vote, the House is merely conducting oversight. The Justice Department raised similar arguments last month, though it was before Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation.

There’s no clear-cut procedure in the Constitution for launching an impeachment inquiry, leaving many of these questions about obstruction untested in court, said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University.

“There’s no specification in the Constitution in what does and does not constitute a more formal impeachment inquiry or investigation,” he said. “One can argue if they’re in an impeachment investigation, they’re in an impeachment.”

It is unclear if Democrats would wade into a lengthy legal fight with the administration over documents and testimony _ or if they would just move straight to considering articles of impeachment.

Schiff said Democrats will “have to decide whether to litigate, or how to litigate.”

Democrats might have a marginally stronger case in court fights over documents they want from the administration now that they’ve initiated an impeachment inquiry. But more important is the prospect of incorporating into impeachment itself the White House’s refusal to cooperate, said Elliot Mincberg, senior counsel for the liberal People for the American Way.

If the White House won’t provide fuller transcripts of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, for example, that could serve “both as evidence to support other allegations and itself impeachable conduct. That’s leverage the Democrats did not previously claim that they have now quite explicitly claimed,” said Mincberg, who previously served as a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee.

Jennifer Victor, a political science professor at George Mason University, said the impeachment inquiry “ups the ante in a checks-and-balances political game with the executive branch. The heightened public spotlight makes it more difficult for the executive branch to skirt requests to appear or deliver documents.”

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Congress issuing subpoena to White House for documents

October 2, 2019

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., wields his gavel on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 12, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Democrats pursuing an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump say they will subpoena the White House on Friday for documents related to his dealings with Ukraine, citing “flagrant disregard” of their previous requests for information.

House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings wrote in a memo to committee members Wednesday that the action is necessary because the White House has ignored multiple requests. Given the “stark and urgent warnings” the inspector general for the intelligence community has delivered to Congress, Cummings said, the panel has “no choice but to issue this subpoena.”

The subpoena is directed toward acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. It requests 13 separate batches of documents related to a July phone call that Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and related matters. The Oversight panel will issue the subpoena in coordination with the House intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, Cummings said.

The action came as House and Senate staff prepared to meet with the State Department’s inspector general on Wednesday. A State Department invitation to the meeting, which was reviewed by The Associated Press, requested an “urgent” meeting with staff from eight House and Senate panels.

The invitation said only that the inspector general, Steve Linick, “would like to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine.” The documents were obtained from the State Department’s acting legal adviser, according to the email.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged Wednesday he was on the phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry. He said that as America’s chief diplomat he is well-versed in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. But Pompeo continued to push back against what he said was Democrats’ “bullying and intimidation.”

The Trump administration has set a defiant tone, resisting Congress’ access to witnesses, even as House Democrats warn such efforts themselves could amount to an impeachable offense.

Democrats have scheduled closed-door depositions Thursday with former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and next week with ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Rome; Angela Charlton in Kyiv, Ukraine; and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this report.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

New York expands probes of Trump Organization

March 12, 2019March 12, 2019

The state of New York late Monday issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank Monday for records relating to financing four major Trump Organization projects and the company’s failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills National Football League franchise.

The move by the state’s attorney general expands existing investigations of Trump’s tax practices and use of his now-defunct charity to fund his personal lifestyle.

Fordham Law School professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman says such moves are needed and long overdue.

“The allegations of criminal conduct by Donald Trump and Trump Organization officials are no longer mere speculation or reporting,” he writes in an OpEd article in Monday’s New York Times. “The public record establishes probable cause for campaign finance felonies, and a potential case for criminal tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud and suborning perjury to hide shady business dealings — a staggering mix of state and federal crimes implicating a range of Trump Organization officials.”

Testimony from former Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen testified Trump inflated his assets and lied to Deutsche Bank to obtain financing for his projects.

New York wants loan applications, mortgages, lines of credit and information on financing transactions involved with Trump International Hotel in Washington, the Trump National Doral near Miami and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.

The actions by New York Attorney General Letitia James are a civil action at this point but she has the power to also seek criminal indictments.

Writes law professor Shugerman:

State attorneys general — especially New York Attorney General Letitia James — should not wait for any Justice Department official to hold Trump accountable for potential crimes. They also do not need to wait to build a case for criminal indictments. The appropriate immediate path is a special state civil proceeding against the Trump Organization and its officials.

Deutsche Bank became Trump’s primary source of money when American banks cut him off after too many questionable loans and losses. The bank gave Trump more than $100 million in 2012 to buy the Doral Golf Resort in 2012 and $170 million in 2015 to Washington’s Old Post Office into his luxury hotel in the nation’s capital. That hotel, and the money paid to it by foreign governments and officials who stay there, has resulted in lawsuits charging Trump with violating federal laws that prohibit him from profiting while president.

The New York attorney general is not alone in investigating Trump’s often-controversial business transactions. The House Intelligence Committee in Washington is probing his real estate transactions with Russia and other foreign entities and Deutsche Bank’s financing of his operations.

Ms. James took over from former Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, we resigned under fire for sexual abuse claims, and promised to pursue Trump.

“I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.” she said in her victory speech when elected. She later said “we will use every area of the law to investigate president Trump and his business transactions and that of his family.”

Deutsche Bank has not responded to requests for comments.

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Feds subpoena Trump inauguration documents

February 5, 2019

President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Federal prosecutors in New York issued a subpoena Monday seeking documents from Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, furthering a federal inquiry into a fund that has faced mounting scrutiny into how it raised and spent its money.

Inaugural committee spokeswoman Kristin Celauro told The Associated Press that the committee had received the subpoena and was still reviewing it.

“It is our intention to cooperate with the inquiry,” she said.

A second spokesman, Owen Blicksilver, declined to answer questions about which documents prosecutors requested. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, which issued the subpoena, declined to comment.

The investigation is the latest in a series of criminal inquiries into Trump’s campaign and presidency. Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia and whether the president obstructed the investigation. In a separate case in New York, prosecutors say Trump directed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to make illegal hush-money payments to two women as a way to quash potential sex scandals during the campaign.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a copy of the subpoena, reported that prosecutors asked for “all documents” related to the committee’s donors and vendors, as well as records relating to “benefits” donors received after making contributions.

The newspaper reported late last year that federal prosecutors are investigating whether committee donors made contributions in exchange for political favors— a potential violation of federal corruption laws. It said the inquiry also was focused on whether the inauguration misspent the $107 million it raised to stage events celebrating Trump’s inauguration.

The subpoena also requested documents relating to donations “made by or on behalf of foreign nationals, including but not limited to any communications regarding or relating to the possibility of donations by foreign nationals,” the Journal reported.

The New York Times reported late last year that federal prosecutors are examining whether anyone from Qatar, Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern countries made illegal payments to the committee and a pro-Trump super political action committee. Foreign contributions to inaugural funds and PACs are prohibited under federal law.

The head of the inaugural committee, Tom Barrack, confirmed to The Associated Press that he was questioned by Mueller in 2017. He told the AP he was not a target of the Mueller investigation.

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Mueller threatens subpoena of Trump in Russia probe

May 2, 2018

President Donald Trump pauses during a during a news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 30, 2018.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The special counsel leading the Russia investigation raised the prospect in March of issuing a grand jury subpoena for President Donald Trump, his former attorney said, confirming that investigators have floated the extraordinary idea of forcing a sitting president to testify under oath.

Attorney John Dowd told The Associated Press on Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team broached the subject during a meeting with Trump’s legal team while they were negotiating the terms of a possible interview with the president.

It was not immediately clear in what context the possibility of a subpoena was raised or how serious Mueller’s prosecutors were about the move. Mueller is probing not only Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates but possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

Even if Mueller’s team decided to subpoena Trump as part of the investigation, he could still fight it in court or refuse to answer questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination.

Dowd’s comments come more than a month after he resigned from the legal team, and they provide a new window into the nature of the Trump lawyers’ interactions with the special counsel, whom the president has increasingly tried to undermine through public attacks.

On Tuesday, Trump said it was “disgraceful” that a list of proposed questions drafted in response to Mueller’s negotiations with the legal team was “leaked” to the news media.

The about four dozen questions were compiled by Trump’s lawyers during negotiations with Mueller’s investigators earlier this year over the prospect of a presidential interview.

A person familiar with the matter, who insisted on anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, told the AP that the president’s lawyers extrapolated the list of expected questions based off conversations with Mueller’s team about the topics prosecutors wanted to cover in a potential sit down with Trump. The questions reflected what the defense lawyers anticipated Trump would be asked, rather than verbatim queries that Mueller’s team provided, the person said.

The Washington Post first reported that Mueller’s team raised the possibility of a subpoena for Trump. The New York Times first published the list of questions.

According to the list, the questions range from Trump’s motivations for firing FBI Director James Comey a year ago to contacts Trump’s campaign had with Russians. Although Mueller’s team has indicated to Trump’s lawyers that he’s not considered a target, investigators remain interested in whether the president’s actions constitute obstruction of justice and want to interview him about several episodes in office. They have not yet made a decision about an interview.

In his tweet, Trump said there were “no questions on Collusion” and, as he as many times before, called Mueller’s investigation a “Russian witch hunt.” He said collusion with the Russians “never existed.”

In a second tweet, Trump said: “It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened.”

The questions do appear to indicate that Mueller is looking into possible collusion. Some touch on Russian meddling and whether the Trump campaign coordinated in any way with the Kremlin. In one question, Mueller asks what Trump knew about campaign staff, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, reaching out to Moscow.

Mueller has brought several charges against Manafort already, including money laundering and bank fraud. None of the charges relates to allegations of Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates, and Manafort has denied having anything to do with such an effort.

The questions also involve key moments from the early months of the Trump administration, including his reaction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation and Trump’s firing of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

One question asks whether there were any efforts to reach out to Flynn “about seeking immunity or possible pardon” ahead of his guilty plea last year. Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller.

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Bannon refuses to answer questions, subpoenas follow

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has refused to answer a broad array of queries from the House Intelligence Committee about his time working for President Donald Trump, leading the committee chairman to authorize a subpoena.

The developments Tuesday brought to the forefront questions about White House efforts to control what Bannon tells Congress about his time in Trump’s inner circle, and whether Republicans on Capitol Hill would force the issue.

The congressional subpoena came the same day The New York Times reported that Bannon, a former far-right media executive and recently scorned Trump adversary, has been subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller to testify before a federal grand jury.

Bannon would be the highest-ranking person who served in the Trump White House to be called before the grand jury. The move doesn’t confirm that Mueller is presenting evidence to support future criminal charges. But it does show that Mueller is actively using the grand jury as he examines the actions of Trump, his family and his staff during the campaign, the presidential transition and the early months of the administration.

Congressional officials declined to say whether Bannon disclosed Mueller’s subpoena during an all-day, closed-door interview with committee members.

Lawmakers questioned Bannon as part of their investigation into Russian election inference and sought answers about Trump’s thinking when he fired FBI Director James Comey.

But Bannon refused to answer questions about that crucial period, and as a result, the chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., issued the subpoena, spokesman Jack Langer said.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee, contended that Bannon’s refusal to answer those questions came at the instruction of the White House.

“This was effectively a gag order by the White House,” Schiff said shortly after Bannon’s interview concluded. Schiff said the committee plans to call Bannon back for a second interview.

A spokeswoman for Bannon did not respond to multiple requests for comment/

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “no one” had encouraged Bannon not to be transparent during questioning but there’s a “process of what that looks like.”

“As with all congressional inquiries touching upon the White House, Congress must consult with the White House prior to obtaining confidential material. This is part of a judicially recognized process that goes back decades,” Sanders told reporters.

A White House official said the president did not seek to formally exert executive privilege over Bannon, which would have barred him from answering certain questions. The official said the administration believes it doesn’t have to invoke the privilege to keep Bannon from answering questions about his time in the White House. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The committee had planned to press Bannon on executive actions by Trump that have drawn interest from congressional investigators examining ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives, said another person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record about the closed-door session and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Those elements bear directly on the criminal investigation led by Mueller, who is charged with investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia and whether the president obstructed justice by firing Comey or by taking other actions to thwart investigators.

The focus on Bannon follows his fall from power after being quoted in a book saying that he sees one of the president’s sons, Donald Jr., and others as engaging in “treasonous” behavior for taking a meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

In Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” Bannon accuses Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of essentially betraying the nation by meeting with a group of Russian lawyers and lobbyists who they believed were ready to offer “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

More recently, Bannon has said he was not referring to Trump Jr. but rather to Manafort. Wolff stands by his account.

After the book’s release, Trump quickly disavowed “Sloppy Steve Bannon” and argued there was no evidence of collusion between his presidential campaign and operatives tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bannon apologized a few days later but was stripped of his job leading the pro-Trump website Breitbart News.

Bannon last year had largely avoided the scrutiny of congressional investigators, who instead focused much of their energy on trying to secure interviews with witnesses such as Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Chad Day contributed to this report.
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Schock’s former staff subpoenaed

April 15, 2015April 15, 2015

Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman) — Former Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill.
(AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

Congress said Tuesday it has been told at least four staffers who worked for former Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury as part of an ongoing probe into the congressman’s expenses.

The Justice Department issued its subpoenas in recent weeks to current and former Schock staffers as it examines expense accounts, his re-election campaign spending and his relationships with political donors. A Springfield, Illinois, grand jury began hearing testimony about the matter earlier this month.

The House clerk reported Tuesday the subpoenas were issued to Schock chief of staff Mark Roman, Peoria district office manager Bryan Rudolph, district chief of staff Dayne LaHood and executive assistant Sarah Rogers.

Schock, a Republican, resigned from Congress March 31 following months of press reports into his office and political spending, including improper mileage reimbursements and trips on his donors’ aircraft, as well as business deals with those contributors.

Federal investigators who questioned likely grand jury witnesses had previously indicated during their questioning that the probe would go beyond Schock’s office expenses. They’re interested in how his money was spent and his business relationships with his donors, according to a person familiar with the probe but who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Schock’s staff did not immediately return phone calls and emails Tuesday afternoon seeking comment. Congressional staffers are required under House rules to notify the speaker if they’ve been subpoenaed.

A spokesman for Schock declined to comment.

The grand jury in this case could indict Schock or not, and it also could target other possible co-conspirators. Individuals can also avoid a grand jury by pleading guilty or otherwise cooperating before they are indicted.

Schock’s resignation followed revelations over six weeks about his business deals and lavish spending on travel, personal mileage reimbursements and office redecorating in the style of “Downton Abbey.” Congressional ethics investigators had begun probing Schock’s conduct in the days before his announcement, but that probe was expected to shut down because of the federal investigation.

A special primary election to replace Schock is scheduled for July 7, with a special general election to follow Sept. 10.
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