WASHINGTON _ The House Intelligence Committee voted Wednesday to send transcripts of its closed-door interviews to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the first step the panel has taken on the Russia investigation since Democrats regained control of the committee.
The vote was bipartisan, Republican lawmakers told reporters after leaving the private hearing.
Mueller could use the transcripts to pursue charges of lying to Congress if he determined that people interviewed by the committee, which include President Donald Trump's eldest son and other allies, were not truthful.
The special counsel has already brought two such prosecutions against the president's former associates.
The president's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about a Moscow skyscraper deal that he pursued on Trump's behalf during the 2016 campaign.
Roger Stone, a Republican operative who helped launch Trump's political career, was indicted last month for alleged witness tampering and lying about his conversations involving WikiLeaks, which posted Democratic Party emails stolen by Russian hackers. Stone has pleaded not guilty.
Stone's transcript was provided to Mueller's office late last year, and it was extensively cited in the indictment against him.
The House committee conducted more than 50 interviews in 2017 and 2018 when the panel, then under Republican control, conducted its own investigation of Russian interference in the presidential campaign.
The GOP-led probe concluded there was no conspiracy between Moscow and Trump's team, an assessment Democrats said was premature. Democrats won control of the House, and the committee, in the November midterm election.
The committee voted to make the transcripts public in the fall, but the documents are undergoing a lengthy declassification review.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who now chairs the panel, is reopening the investigation. He said he would seek financial records and other documents that Republicans did not pursue when they were in charge.
"We will also be reaching out immediately to acquire certain documentary evidence that we've already been in touch with institutions about," Schiff told the Los Angeles Times last month.
One mystery that Schiff highlighted apparently was solved by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a separate investigation.
Democrats had speculated that Donald Trump Jr. called his father before and after holding a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.
But the Senate committee reportedly determined that the calls involved two business associates, not the president.
Schiff told MSNBC the committee still planned to investigate the issue, including whether Trump Jr. spoke to his father in person.
"So we're going to get to the bottom of this," Schiff said. "Why all the lies? Why the cover-up? What more was going on here and a key part is to find out what the president's role was in all of this."
