The House judiciary panel is requesting documents from more than 80 people or entities in Trump’s orbit, including his adult sons.
A key House committee with the power to impeach President Donald Trump kicked off a sweeping new investigation on Monday with document demands from the White House, Trump’s namesake company, charity, transition, inauguration and 2016 campaign, as well as several longtime associates and the president’s two adult sons.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, opened his much-anticipated probe with letters to 81 individuals, companies and government entities seeking a wide range of materials that go to the heart of allegations against the president — including abuses of power, corruption, and obstruction of justice.
“This is a critical time for our nation,” Nadler wrote to each recipient, all of which his staff noted have already been ensnared in investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller or other federal prosecutors. “President Trump and his administration face wide-ranging allegations of misconduct that strike at the heart of our constitutional order.”
By initiating the wide-ranging demand for documents, the Judiciary Committee signaled it is creating its own insurance policy in the event that all of Mueller’s findings are not made public and it finds the kinds of evidence that would be grounds for trying to impeach Trump from office. Public hearings and closed-door interviews based off the materials will begin in a matter of weeks, a senior Democratic committee lawyer said.
The list of letter recipients reads like a who’s who of people in and around the president’s orbit, notably all of Trump’s senior 2016 campaign leaders, including Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Brad Parscale, the current campaign manager for the 2020 re-election effort.
Trump’s White House and key former top aides including chief of staff Reince Priebus, counsel Don McGahn, deputy national security adviser KT McFarland, communications director Hope Hicks and press secretary Sean Spicer must also hand over documents tied to several incidents that have long been seen as central to the swirling federal investigations into the president, his campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Topics under review by the Democrat-led panel include the firing of national security adviser Michael Flynn after he lied to senior White House officials about his communications with Russian officials, as well as then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from overseeing the DOJ-led probes into the Trump campaign and the president’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.
At the Trump Organization, top executives Donald Trump Jr.
