Dem Lawmaker Releases Damning Allegations Against Donald Trump Jr.
Without offering either proof or specifics, Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California is claiming Donald Trump Jr. lied to a House panel on the subject of Russian collusion with his father’s presidential campaign
Speier, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, made the comments Friday on CNN.
Speier was asked by CNN’s Brianna Keilar to share chapter and verse of the alleged offense committed by the son of President Donald Trump, but Speier refused.
“I don’t really want to go into it at this point, but I think there’s at least two occasions where he lied to the committee,” she said.
Speier implied that her allegations were related to documents that have not been seen by the committee.
“In part, it is somewhat related to documents that we never were able to subpoena because the Republicans were really the puppets of the president in terms of trying to protect him and not being the independent investigative authority that we should have been looking at the issue,” Speier added.
As part of new investigations that the panel will launch into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign, she said Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the president and the president’s son-in-law, will be asked to testify.
“I think they will be subpoenaed if they don’t come voluntarily and we will certainly subpoena their records,” she said.
Trump Jr. was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 regarding a June 2016 meeting with Russian individuals who promised to provide material damaging to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Kushner spoke to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees in July 2017, CNN reported
Speier said that even though the panel ended its investigation in March, Democrats need to re-open it.
“We want to hear from, I think, a number of people that we have already interviewed,” Speier said. “All of the phone bills and phone calls made and all of the direct messages and the emails that were never subpoenaed need to be subpoenaed for the primary persons that were part of the Trump orbit and campaign.”
Speier claimed that she was seeking the truth.
“When you swear under oath, my expectation is that you’re going to tell the truth. That’s the one time and place that you’re going to tell the truth,” Speier said. “There have been a number of people that we have interviewed that have absolutely lied to us. And you cannot lie to Congress, that is a felony, and I think what needs to happen is they need to be prosecuted.”
Speier was publicly critical of Trump Jr. after his closed-door session last year, saying he had a case of amnesia.
“He was pretty non-responsive on a lot of issues that, frankly, you would have a recollection of, considering it was just a year ago that many of these events took place when Donald Trump was the candidate,” Speier said on CNN. “He was by his father’s side; he was campaigning with his father. And you get the impression in listening to him that he didn’t spend much time talking to his father.”
“Lots of people don’t recall things,” she said. “But I would say that there are elements of this where he was very clear and knew precisely what had happened, and then other circumstances he didn’t at all.”
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