WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday canceled a closed-doors interview with President Donald Trump\u2019s lawyer Michael Cohen and called on him to appear before the panel in an open session, saying it was disappointed he released a statement despite a request that he refrain from public comment. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, we declined to move forward with today\u2019s interview and will reschedule Mr. Cohen\u2019s appearance before the committee in open session at a date in the near future,\u201d the committee\u2019s leaders, Republican Senator Richard Burr, and Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman, said in a joint statement. <\/p>\n
\u201dThe committee expects witnesses in this investigation to work in good faith with the Senate,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n
The committee had scheduled an interview between its investigators and Cohen as part of its investigation into Russia\u2019s reported interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether Trump or his top aides colluded with Moscow. <\/p>\n
The intelligence panel, other congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Russia\u2019s reported interference in the election and whether Trump or top aides colluded with Moscow. <\/p>\n
The Russian government denies any attempt to influence the election, and Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion, calling the investigations a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d <\/p>\n
In his statement, Cohen denied that he or Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the election, and said such charges were made to discredit Trump\u2019s presidency. <\/p>\n
\u201cI emphatically state that I had nothing to do with any Russian involvement in our electoral process,\u201d Cohen\u2019s statement said. \u201cGiven my own proximity to the president of the United States as a candidate, let me also say that I never saw anything – not a hint of anything – that demonstrated his involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russia collusion,\u201d Cohen said. <\/p>\n
Cohen and his attorney, Stephen Ryan, had traveled to Capitol Hill for the closed-door interview with committee investigators, but were told the meeting had been postponed. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to send a message except for what we do is behind closed doors,\u201d Burr later told reporters at the Capitol. <\/p>\n
Cohen\u2019s name surfaced in a dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, that reported Cohen played an important role in liaison with the Russian government and secretly met with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016. <\/p>\n
The Steele dossier, Cohen said in his statement, is \u201criddled with falsehoods and intentionally salacious allegations.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI have never in my life been to Prague or to anywhere in the Czech Republic,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials have said that while they cannot verify all the details in the Steele dossier, neither have they debunked it entirely. <\/p>\n
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Trump\u2019s nominee to be ambassador to Russia, said on Tuesday there was no question that Moscow meddled in the 2016 U.S. election, and pledged to bring up the issue with the government there. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no question, underline no question, that the Russian government interfered in the U.S. election last year,\u201d Huntsman, who has also served as U.S. ambassador to China, said at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing. <\/p>\n
Additional reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Alistair Bell<\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/feeds.reuters.com\/~r\/Reuters\/PoliticsNews\/~3\/B8R6ApEEk04\/senate-panel-seeks-open-session-with-trump-lawyer-after-canceling-interview-idUSKCN1BU29R<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday canceled a closed-doors interview with President Donald Trump\u2019s lawyer Michael Cohen and called on him to appear before the panel in an open session, saying it was disappointed he released a statement despite a request that he refrain from public comment. \u201cAs a result, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-91888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}