POLITICS
15/08/2020
06:02 BST
Senators Sought Justice Department Probe Of Steve
Bannon's Testimony On Russia: Report
An Intelligence Committee letter raised concerns about
meetings involving Bannon and security contractor Erik Prince, the Los Angeles
Times reported.
By Mary
Papenfuss, HuffPost US
The Senate
Intelligence Committee sent a bipartisan letter last year to the Department of
Justice calling for an investigation into possible lying by former White House
chief strategist Steve Bannon when he testified about Russian interference in
the last presidential election, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
It’s not
known what the response was.
The letter,
sent July 19, 2019, has not been released publicly but has been seen by the
Times. It also raised concerns about testimony by family members and other
confidants of President Donald Trump. Their testimony seemed to contradict
information provided by former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates to former
special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the letter, the Times reported.
“As you are
aware, the Committee is conducting an investigation into Russian interference
in the 2016 election,” the letter stated, according to the Times. “As part of
that inquiry, and as a result of witness interviews and document production, we
now have reason to believe that the following individuals may have committed a
criminal act.”
The letter
names Bannon, who served as chief executive of the 2016 Trump campaign. It also
names private security contractor Erik Prince — brother of Education Secretary
Betsy DeVos — and Sam Clovis, who served as co-chair of Trump’s campaign,
according to the Times.
The
committee believed Bannon may have lied about his interactions with Prince,
hedge fund manager Rick Gerson and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian
sovereign fund, according to the newspaper’s account of the letter.
All were
linked to meetings that took place in Seychelles before Trump’s inauguration.
Investigators
suspected that the men may have been working to arrange back-channel
communications between the Trump administration and Moscow, the Times reported.
Bannon and Prince have told conflicting stories about the Seychelles meeting.
Bannon’s
lawyer William Burck told the Times he never heard from the U.S. attorney’s
office about his client. Prince’s lawyer dismissed the report.
Before
Trump’s inauguration, Prince, the founder of the controversial military
contractor Blackwater, said he met Dmitriev by chance on Seychelles and ended
up talking with the financier, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir
Putin, according to an April 2019 article in The Washington Post. Prince later
told the Mueller investigation that he briefed Bannon about the meeting and
gave him contact information, but Bannon later denied any such meeting took
place, according to an article last year in U.S. News & World Report. The
Mueller report concluded the meeting had not been happenstance and had been
arranged between Prince and Dmitriev.
The Senate
committee’s letter also referred to concerns about testimony by Donald Trump
Jr., White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, former
communications director Hope Hicks and former Trump campaign manager and now
convicted felon Paul Manafort, according to the newspaper.
Concerns
about Trump Jr. involved the nature of his meeting in Trump Tower in Manhattan
with a Russian lawyer who promised she had “dirt” on Democratic presidential
rival Hillary Clinton. The president’s son claimed the meeting was to discuss
American adoptions of Russian children.
The letter
was sent to Deborah Curtis, a top prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in
Washington, D.C., the Times reported. The Justice Department declined to
comment when contacted by the Times.
Lying to
Congress is a felony.
The news
emerged just as the Senate committee is close to releasing its final report on
its investigation into Russian election meddling in the 2016 presidential
election.
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