The Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee has approved subpoenas for 12 witnesses in the ongoing probe into whether President Trump obstructed special counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘Russian collusion’ investigation.
In a vote on Thursday afternoon, the committee vested its chairman, Jerry Nadler (D-New York), with the power to call the 12 witnesses to testify. The list of subpoenas includes White House aide and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as well as other key figures questioned as part of the Mueller investigation, which sought to prove whether then-candidate Trump conspired with Moscow to win the 2016 presidential election.
“We will not rest until we obtain their testimony and documents so this committee and Congress can do the work that the Constitution and the American people expect of us,” Nadler said after the committee meeting.
The House panel also approved subpoenas for David Pecker and Dylan Howard, executives at American Media Inc., a company reportedly involved in the president’s “hush money” payments to women claiming to have been romantically involved with him, though Nadler has yet to actually issue those subpoenas.
President Trump shredded the move in a now-deleted tweet on Thursday afternoon, assailing the obstruction probe and pleading with the lawmakers: “Enough already, get back to work!”
The ranking Republican member on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Doug Collins (R-Georgia), was also critical, arguing the move was “premature.”
The committee will hear testimony from Mueller himself next week, who has so far been reluctant to answer questions about his two-year investigation or the 450-page report it produced. While Mueller’s investigation into alleged ties between the president and Moscow came up empty-handed, Trump’s critics rapidly changed focus from ‘collusion’ to obstruction of justice, an idea which Democrats in the House and Senate continue to flog.