A key House committee investigating an opposition-research dossier containing salacious details on Donald Trump has reportedly subpoenaed personally the heads of both the FBI and the Justice Department over their agencies’ noncooperation with the panel’s previous efforts.
According to a report Tuesday in the Washington Examiner, the House Intelligence Committee is gathering a “growing frustration … over the FBI and Justice Department’s lack of cooperation in the Trump-Russia investigation.”
The panel wants to know what relationship the FBI and Justice had with Christopher Steele, the document’s compiler, and whether it was used to justify spying on Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign.
According to the Examiner, the House panel subpoenaed the FBI and Justice both for documents related to those matters, to be provided by Sept. 1.
“We got nothing,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and an Intelligence panel member, told the Examiner on Tuesday. “The witnesses have not been produced and the documents have not been produced.”
In response, the Examiner reports, the panel extended the deadlines on the two subpoenas to Sept. 14, but also issued two new ones — to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — directing the two men to appear before the panel to explain their agencies’ noncompliance.
“A subpoena is a tool of last resort in Congress,” a frustrated Mr. Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, told the Examiner.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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