Devin Nunes was in charge of the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. However, Nunes ultimately became a shill for the *resident, and never pressed for a real investigation. During the course of the investigation, many witnesses appeared before the Committee and their testimony is part of the permanent Committee record. Some of the witness testimony has been made public, some remains sealed.
As many Democrats on the Committee have pointed out, witnesses often gave misleading statements, often contradicting their prior or subsequent public statements. That’s a problem for them, because there is a huge potential for determining whether pro-Trump witness statements to the Committee were or were not truthful.
The website investigateerussia.org has published a summary of many the witnesses who appeared before the Committee under Nunes and his fellow Republicans. For example,
July 25, 2017: Jared Kushner answered questions from members of the House Intelligence Committee for nearly three hours behind closed doors.
September 26, 2017: Roger Stone met with Committee investigators behind closed doors.
October 24, 2017: House Intelligence Committee investigators met with Michael Cohen and Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign's digital director, separately and behind closed doors.
November 1, 2017: Facebook's general counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter's acting general counsel Sean Edgett, and Google's senior vice president and general counsel Kent Walker testified before the full committee.
November 2, 2017: Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page testified behind closed doors.
Then we learn from Eric Swallwell that another Trump adviser, Michael Caputo, may have also lied to the Committee.
I think they [Stone and Caputo] just lied through their teeth to protect the fact that they were willing and eager to take a meeting with Russians who were offering dirt.
Did Erik Prince also lie to the Committee?
Prince told the House Intelligence Committee he played “no official or, really, unofficial role” in the Trump campaign and had no formal communications with the campaign.
And there is disturbing speculation that Don Jr may not have been totally truthful during his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony.
During the months that the Russia investigation was headed by Nunes and other Republicans, they broadcast that they had no interest in learning the truth, they were actively covering up the truth, so there was little incentive for their witnesses to actually tell the truth.
If any of these witnesses lied to House or Senate Committee members or staffers, Mueller would love to hear about it. He has already requested and received Roger Stone’s House Committee testimony, and used Stone’s false statements liberally in the indictment filed on January 24. Is Mueller interested in receiving other transcripts as well? Now that Adam Schiff and the Dems are in charge at HPSCI, Mueller will likely get whatever he asks for.
I hope they don’t all have Rudy (“it’s not a crime”) Giuliani as their lawyer. Or maybe I do.