House Intel Dems just gave Mueller a key missing piece of his Trump-Russia probe

Barely twelve hours after the President pathetically used his nationally televised State of the Union address to beg House Democrats to stop investigating him, they just handed Special Counsel Robert Mueller the most important evidence he needs to prosecute Trump, his family, and his cronies.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence just moved to hand Mueller all of their interview transcripts with the testimony from their GOP-led Russia probe in the last Congress.

Those interviews included such prominent names as Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, former White House advisor Steve Bannon, and former White House communications director Hope Hicks.

It is a crime to lie to or knowingly obstruct a Congressional investigation with false statements.

Special Counsel Mueller has already bagged a plea and cooperation deal from former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen by proving that he lied to the Senate, presumably using their transcripts.

Now, the House Intel committee has taken a fateful step towards ending Mueller’s probe with a flurry of indictments in their first official act of the new Congress.

CNN’s Jeremy Herb broke the story and reported that all it took was a simple voice vote.

House Republicans did everything they could to protect Donald Trump during the first two years of his presidency, even though it has long been apparent that he’s overly deferential to Putin, amongst his other numerous shortcomings.

Before ex-Speaker Paul Ryan declared himself a lame duck last year, he personally enabled the former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) in 2017 to engage in an elaborate ruse to falsely claim that he had exculpatory evidence about Trump, when all of his bunkum information really came from the White House.

Speaker Pelosi demanded that Ryan remove Nunes from House Intel a year ago – an appropriate step considering he was part of the Trump Transition Team which is under investigation – which the former GOP Speaker flatly refused.

A day later, Nunes “successfully” completed his insane “Release the Memo” campaign to expose the intimate details about the process of obtaining a FISA Warrant, which allowed the FBI to surveil Trump’s foreign policy advisor Carter Page after he met with Russian government officials on a trip sanctioned by and during the presidential campaign.

All Rep. Nunes proved was that the FBI had a very good reason to look into the “energy consultant” Page since he was involved in the apprehension of a previous Russian spy ring that resulted in a criminal conviction.

That didn’t stop House Intel Democrats like current Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from using their former positions in the minority to ask tough questions to Trump’s associates and White House staffers, as well as to inform the public about grave GOP abuses in the way they conducted their Russia probe.

Ultimately, Democrats released their final Russia investigation status memo about six weeks after Rep. Nunes released the GOP’s faulty majority report, which Trump used to claim exoneration, falsely, as usual.

Rep. Schiff’s minority report contained seven pages outlining the Committee’s lines of investigation and fourteen pages of witnesses and companies who should’ve been subpoenaed to testify after their first visit, or who escaped testimony altogether during a GOP-led partisan inquiry that Rep. Swalwell called “what the cover up to a crime looks like.

Today’s news that House Intel is releasing their transcripts means that Don Jr., Hope Hicks, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and many other top Trump acolytes will face Mueller’s scrutiny over their testimony in fairly short order.

Donald Trump must be trembling now that his weak cry for mercy – on national television – from the multiple criminal investigations closing in on he and his team has fallen on deaf ears less than 24 hours later.

But this is exactly why a massive resistance to Trump’s criminality and graft arose in the ranks of the Democratic party, leading to a Blue Wave election and culminating in this moment, the first time that Congress has fully checked the President in over two years.

Grant Stern

Editor at Large

is the Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats and published author. His new Meet the Candidates 2020 book series is distributed by Simon and Schuster. He's also a mortgage broker, community activist and radio personality in Miami, Florida., as well as the producer of the Dworkin Report podcast. Grant is also an occasional contributor to Raw Story, Alternet, and the DC Report, an unpaid senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition, and a Director of Sunshine Agenda Inc. a government transparency nonprofit organization. Get all of his stories sent directly to your inbox here: