It’s been nearly five weeks since Trump suggested he had tapes of his conversations with James Comey when he tweeted, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
President Trump and his White House press secretary Sean Spicer still won’t tell us if Donald Trump has the tapes with which he threatened former FBI Director James Comey, but House Democrats aren’t having it. Top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) gave Trump until Friday to turn the tapes over and if he won’t, subpoenas could be coming his way.
Schiff told Politico in an interview, “I certainly would hope we’ll get a response from the White House by Friday. If we don’t, then we’ll have to determine what the next steps are.”
“Asked if next steps could include subpoenas, the California Democrat responded: ‘Yes, it could.’”
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Austin Wright of Politico pointed out that both Republicans Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) would have to agree to subpoenas.
House Democrats are doing additional digging into Trump’s possible collusion with Russia, this time into Trump’s finances. On Thursday they “rejected an assertion by Deutsche Bank that privacy laws prevent it from sharing information about President Donald Trump’s finances, as they investigate possible collusion between his campaign team and Russia.”
President Trump continues to deny that Russia attacked the U.S. on his behalf during the 2016 election, although it is an established fact that this happened and we’ve been repeatedly warned that is continuing to happen.
James Comey and other intelligence officials say that President Trump never asked them about or showed any interest in Russia’s attack on the U.S.; rather, Trump was obsessed with getting the message out that he was not under personal investigation.
Republicans will probably not agree to subpoena President Trump, as they have shown scant interest in doing their job of oversight for this President, even when it involves protecting the U.S.A. from an attack by a hostile, aggressive foreign power. Instead, Republicans are laser focused on ramming through their pet projects of killing Obamacare and giving the rich another tax break.
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