Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and President Donald Trump’s daughter and senior aide Ivanka Trump could soon testify before congressional Russian election meddling probes, according to a range of sources and reports.
On Thursday, the House Intelligence committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff, told reporters at the Capitol that Ms. Trump should appear before the panel, which he said still needs to interview “dozens” of witnesses to ensure “a complete job” of investigating alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and Kremlin-connected figures.
“I think it would be valuable to have her [Ms. Trump] come and testify,” he said.
Mr. Schiff also alluded to a Los Angeles Times story from last week which reported that Ms. Trump could have come into contact with participants of a controversial June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that involved a Kremlin-linked Russians lawyer who offered the Trump campaign damaging information on her father’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The meeting also involved her brother, Donald Trump Jr., and her husband and White House special advisor, Jared Kushner.
According to the story, Ms. Trump might have bumped into the participants as they left the meeting — which special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating.
“I think that if there’s credible information that Ivanka Trump had contact with any of the participants in that meeting at the time of that meeting, she should be brought in,” he said.
In highly anticipated, headline-grabbing exchanges, both Mr. Kusher and Mr. Trump Jr. were interviewed behind closed doors by multiple congressional Russian meddling inquires.
Mr. Schiff also told Reuters he wants House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes to call Mr. Bannon as a witness, in addition to speaking with Mr. Kushner again.
Meanwhile, reports surfaced on Thursday that Mr. Bannon could appear before the panel as early as next Tuesday and that he has hired Washington lawyer Bill Burck to help him prepare him to testify.
President Trump repeated again this week that there was “no collusion” between any members of his campaign and Russia.
Speculation also continued to mount on Thursday that Mr. Trump could soon be interviewed by Mr. Mueller’s investigation.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
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