Transcripts from 57 closed-door congressional hearings from a two-year investigation into Russian interference in Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign have been released, moments after the Justice Department dropped charges against key figure Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Documents include previously unreleased transcripts from hearings with the president’s family members – including Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner – and other Trump allies.
The investigation from 2017 and 2018 ultimately led to the president’s impeachment and the convictions of two witnesses for attempts to obstruct the investigation.
Another investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t establish a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia but revealed attempts by the campaign to invite ”illicit Russian help” and the subsequent cover-up, committee chair Adam Schiff, who emerged as the president’s chief impeachment foe, said in a statement.
The “president’s misconduct did not end with his election in 2016 or his attempts to cover up that effort”, Mr Schiff said. “Rather, in the course of his presidency, he continued to seek illicit foreign help in his campaign by coercing another nation, Ukraine, to smear his opponent. After making use of Russia’s help with his first presidential campaign, president Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to help him in 2020 by withholding critical military aid to that country and a coveted head of state meeting.”
Mr Schiff said that the president’s efforts to “make use of the help of a foreign power to win an election, and then to extort yet another foreign power to try to win again, represent a grave threat to the health of our democracy now and in the future”.
The committee had initially voted to release the documents two years ago, but the transcripts remained in limbo under White House review, which Mr Schiff called an “excessive delay” and the “direct result of improper political interference” by the administration, he wrote in a letter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
He wrote: “The testimony that the committee is releasing today serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing threat that Russian interference poses to our democratic process and, specifically, to the 2020 election.”
The release follows a Fox News appearance from Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, who dared Mr Schiff to release the transcripts for “the American people to see how little evidence there ever was for the Russian collusion hoax he advocated and continues to advocate” despite partisan efforts to withhold the documents.
Prior to their release, committee officials reviewed the redactions in the documents after they received them from the White House.
Earlier today, Justice Department officials dropped charges against Mr Flynn, the president’ former national security advisor, despite his guilty plea, marking a dramatic reversal from his admission to the FBI in 20217 that he had conversations with the Russian ambassador. Mr Flynn then became key cooperator for Mr Mueller’s investigation.
In court filings, prosecutors said that his FBI interview was “untethered to, and unjustified by” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr Flynn, and that the interview was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
On Thursday, Mr Trump called him an “innocent man” and “an even greater warrior” while railing against the media for reporting on the scandal as well as his predecessor Barack Obama and FBI officials held over from the previous administration.
Mr Flynn was to be senteced for at least six months in prison, though his sentencing was deferred several times.
