Lawyers for the House of Representatives are suggesting President Trump may have lied about his knowledge of his 2016 campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks.
The allegation came as part of a court filing for the House Judiciary Committee’s plea to access former special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury materials, including the redacted pieces that have remained classified.
“Not only could those materials demonstrate the president’s motives for obstructing the special counsel’s investigation, they also could reveal that Trump was aware of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.
House general counsel Douglas Letter referenced the Mueller report in the filing, saying former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s testimony showed he “recalled” the president had asked to be kept “updated” about WikiLeaks leaking Democratic National Committee emails, the news outlet noted.{mosads}
“The text redacted … and any underlying evidence to which it may point are critical to the committee’s investigation,” the lawyers wrote. “Those materials therefore have direct bearing on whether the president was untruthful, and further obstructed the special counsel’s investigation, when in providing written responses to the special counsel’s questions he denied being aware of any communications between his campaign and WikiLeaks.”
The filing also cited relevance to the House’s investigation of Trump’s contacts with Ukraine amid a recent scandal that has prompted the chamber to launch a formal impeachment inquiry against the president.
The filing came in response to the Justice Department’s move to block the information from getting into lawmakers’ hands.
Read filing by kballuck1 on Scribd