Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have rejected a call to have President Trump's interpreter testify about what the president and Vladimir Putin discussed one-on-one in Helsinki on Monday.
“This is an extraordinary remedy, I realize, but then it’s extraordinary for the president of the United States to ask all of his senior staff essentials to leave the room and have a conversation with an adversary,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who called for the vote to compel the interpreter to testify behind closed doors. “And then in a public conversation disavow his own intelligence agencies and in many respects disavow his own country.”
(...)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) have also called for the translator’s testimony.
Schiff noted Democrats had requested a business meeting for next week but that the request had been declined, arguing “this may be our last opportunity before we go into an extended recess” to make such an effort.
Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) initially declined to recognize Schiff’s motion before recessing the panel for about 20 minutes. When it reconvened, the committee voted along party lines, 11-6, to table Schiff’s attempt to bring the interpreter before the committee.
Republicans' refusal to cooperate has become the norm, according to committee Democrats who are trying to keep the Russia investigation alive.
CNN:
Democrats say Republicans have been playing petty games preventing them from carrying out basic tasks, including spending any money to cover the costs of flying witnesses to Washington. They say the GOP has prevented the Democrats from using the committee spaces for interviews.
Democrats contend that the GOP has even taken the step of denying the use of free-of-charge House transcription services. Instead, they have had to rely on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office to pay for outside transcription services and to use her offices to conduct interviews -- as they did when the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, met with the panel in April and for Wednesday's interview with Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos.
But beyond the small-bore disputes, there is one serious matter at hand, Democrats say: They want to share the transcripts of their witness interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller over concerns that some witnesses may have been untruthful, but Nunes, they say, isn't cooperating.
"They certainly do what they can to make it difficult for us," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said of Republicans, accusing them of "affirmatively" working to urge witnesses not to cooperate with them. "They not only don't want to hear what the Trump campaign knew about Russian possession of the stolen emails, but they don't want us to know either."
(...)
"They won't even agree to pay for any investigation that is not of the investigators themselves," Schiff said, referring to Nunes' efforts to investigate how the Trump-Russia probe was handled in 2016. "That's the only thing they're willing to investigate."
House Republicans defeat attempt to subpoena Trump interpreter (Politico)
Democratic push to investigate Russia stymied by partisan acrimony (CNN)