A committee of the House charged with issuing a subpoena blitz, thereby increasing the heat on Trump



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WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee will vote this week to authorize a series of new subpoenas against the Trump Government's practice of separating children from their families at the border and the possible obstruction of President Trump to the justice, bringing some of the biggest names to appear at Robert Inquiry of S. Mueller III.

The votes, scheduled for Thursday, will provoke two of the most important Democrat surveillance inquiries on Trump and his administration, and will certainly worsen relations with the White House.

Jeff Sessions, former Attorney General; Michael T. Flynn, First Counselor to the President for National Security; John F. Kelly, former Chief of Staff of the White House; Rod J. Rosenstein, the former Deputy Attorney General who appointed Mr. Mueller special advocate; Corey R. Lewandowski, former Trump campaign director; and David J. Pecker, who, at the head of American Media, took part in a secret money ploy.

By acting on border policies of the administration, the committee will also seek to establish itself a new authority allowing it to summon present and former officials, to answer questions and to provide documents regarding Mr. Trump's "zero tolerance" policy, which separates children apprehended at the border. their families – and any presidential pardon discussion for the Department of Homeland Security officials involved in the implementation of the policy.

"For months, we have held hearings and sent letters to the court organs involved in the implementation of a catastrophic and inhumane family separation policy on the southern border," said in a statement the president of the Judiciary Committee, the New York representative, Jerrold Nadler. "Many questions remain unresolved and it is high time to take stock of this policy and practice."

There is no guarantee that the administration will comply. Mr. Trump is committed to resisting subpoenas of the House and his administration has systematically blocked the testimony of government witnesses and access to sensitive documents of the executive branch.

In the case of Mueller-related subpoenas, the testimony of many senior Democratic officials may be the subject of claims of executive privilege or immunity from White House witnesses that have been used to people to appear at Capitol Hill. Democrats say these claims are not valid and that any dispute will likely end up in the courts.

Republicans will almost certainly oppose subpoenas on both fronts. The representative of Georgia, Doug Collins, the most Republican representative of the committee, rejected the votes to appear as "the last effort of today to relaunch the special council inquiry".

"Even though President Nadler still thinks subpoenas are a topic of conversation, it's hard to imagine that these few subpoenas will do anything but reinforce the key conclusions we've been reading for months," he said. said Collins.

The announcement of the Judiciary Committee comes as legislators from this commission and the House's intelligence committee prepare to hear Mr. Mueller himself next week for the first time. The former special advocate objected to his testimony but eventually agreed to hold consecutive two-hour public hearings with the committees.

The Democrats hope that the sessions will bring Mr. Mueller's dense 448-page report to life and spark public interest in Trump's dozen or so episodes of possible obstruction of justice. been documented by the survey. Republicans will put forward another of Mueller's conclusions: his team did not find evidence to support the cause of Mr. Trump's campaign, which had plotted with the Russians to undermine the 2016 election .

The new subpoenas related to the committee's investigation into a possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by Trump would encourage Democrats to try to build on the momentum Mr. Mueller could provide. They target former law enforcement officials and the White House, as well as individuals related to the payment of hidden money during the 2016 campaign, as part of the efforts to buy the silence of a pornographic film actress and a Playboy model who claimed to have had relations with Mr. Atout.

Many subpoenas have intimate knowledge of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia during Moscow's attempt to subvert the 2016 election or Trump's subsequent efforts to prevent investigators Federal government attempts to unravel these links by attempting to remove Mr. Mueller, interrupting his investigation or taking other measures.

Jody Hunt, Mr. Sessions' chief of staff, who took detailed notes on contacts with the president, and Rick A. Dearborn, a Sessions confidant who participated in the Trump campaign and the White House. The committee will also issue subpoenas to Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and White House advisor.

If the committee votes to authorize subpoenas as scheduled, Mr. Nadler will have the discretion to decide when to issue them.

The committee has already authorized but not yet used subpoenas to Reince Priebus, Trump's first chief of staff, and Stephen K. Bannon, who participated in the presidential campaign and was the early architect of his presidency.

The Judiciary Committee is not the only committee in the House to continue to attack the witnesses to Mr. Mueller's inquiry. On Tuesday, intelligence committee staff members privately questioned Felix H. Sater, a former Trump sales associate, about his work on a draft Trump tower project in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Sater's role in it has been extensively documented in the Special Advocate's report, which contradicts Mr. Trump's statements that he was not active in Russia.

The details of Mr. Sater's testimony were not disclosed, but a spokesperson for the committee, Patrick Boland, then issued a statement that Mr. Sater had not fully cooperated with the committee. Mr. Boland stated that Mr. Sater had expressly refused to answer questions about a false statement about the Moscow project submitted to Congress by Michael D. Cohen, his former business partner and close associate of Mr. Trump.

While seeking to focus on Mueller's conclusions, the Democrats have vowed to reinforce their scrutiny of Trump's border policies, which divide, while the consequences of a persistent humanitarian the southern border continue to be heard across the country.

The House Watch and Reform Committee will convene hearings this week on separation of migrant children from their families and special treatment of children in detention centers.

President Nancy Pelosi told her colleagues on Tuesday that the House would also consider legislation proposed by Democrat legislators returning from border visits, including bills banning family separation in most cases, setting new standards for the medical care of migrants detained and limiting the time that an unaccompanied child can spend in a temporary detention center.

The Judicial Committee's interest in rehabilitations appears to stem from reports that Mr. Trump reportedly told Kevin K. McAleenan, a Border Supervisor this spring, that he later became Acting Secretary of the Board. Homeland Security, that it would issue a pardon if Mr. McAleenan encountered legal problems posed by the presidential request to close the southwestern border to migrants. Mr. McAleenan has never taken such steps.

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