Even just the word “subpoena” must be terrifying for the GOP at this point — and not just for officials inside the Trump administration, but those in Congress as well. Now that the Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives, they’ve made clear they intend to use their subpoena power to get to the bottom of a number of issues — as well as finding out why, when Republicans held the reins of power, they were so eager to stifle the investigations in question.
The answer to both is particularly problematic for the GOP and Trump when it comes to the Russia investigation. At no point did it ever look like Devin Nunes or other former-majority were interested in finding the truth about anything, and Republicans closed their investigations into Russian intervention in the 2016 election without issuing subpoenas for a number of witnesses that Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee wanted to interview.
But perhaps most troubling of all is the GOP treatment of Donald Trump Jr, who gave limited and varying testimony, much of which was later proven to be false.
Highest on the list of mysteries left by the rapid close of the Republican investigation was their refusal to call back Trump Jr after it was discovered — before their investigation was closed — that he had lied about a series of phone calls and the impetus behind the Trump Tower meeting in 2016 that involved a Kremlin lawyer and her Russian intelligence attaché.
Now Congressman Adam Schiff, in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, has made sure that it’s public knowledge that Democrats fully intend to subpoena the phone records surrounding that time, and to determine whether one call in particular from a blocked number was a conversation between Trump Jr and his father, which the younger Trump testified under oath never took place.
We know in the run-up to this meeting at Trump Tower that there were phone calls going back and forth between Don Jr. and the Russian oligarch’s son…[and] sandwiched between those calls…is a blocked call and we wanted to know, did that come from the president?”
It’s a new day in America, and possibly a new phase of the various probes into the Trump family’s deep ties to Russian interests and the Kremlin itself.
Featured image via screen capture
