Monday on CNN’s “At This Hour,” chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) said “all things are on the table” when asked if his committee would subpoena President Donald Trump’s interpreter to testify about the president’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When asked if he has the authority to get the notes from Helsinki, Engel said, “I think ultimately. That’s not what we’re up to yet. We want intelligence committee. There’s no sense to have two investigations going on. So we want to work with them. No decision has been made on subpoenas or anything else. We’re going to not do this cavalierly. We’re going to put our heads together and do it together. I look forward to working with Chairman Schiff and others that may be involved with jurisdiction. What we’re not going to do is sit back and do nothing. We’re going to try to get to the bottom of this.”
He continued, “I certainly think we do. You talk in the Foreign Affairs Committee, you talk about foreign affairs and what could be more of foreign affairs than the leader of the United States meeting with the leader of another country. What really is disturbing about all this, forget about subpoenas, yes, no, whatever, is the fact that we all know that the Russians interfered in our 2016 election. We know they interfered to try to help Donald Trump win. And since that time there have been meetings between Putin and Trump and we don’t know what went on.”
He added, “All things are on the table. I would like in a perfect world not to look at what an interpreter wrote. I would prefer not to do that. We will find out. If I had a choice, I would rather not do that with the interpreter. We may have no choice. We’ll have to see down the road what happens. We want to get to the truth.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.