White House says it received demands from Judiciary chairman

The White House on Monday said that it received a letter from the House Judiciary Committee related to its sweeping probe into allegations of obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power by President Trump and his associates.

“The House Judiciary Committee’s letter has been received by the White House,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a brief statement. “The counsel’s office and relevant White House officials will review it and respond at the appropriate time.”

A day earlier, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said he would send document requests to more than 60 current and former administration officials, Trump family members and Trump Organization figures.

Sanders did not name any people who received requests, but the list is said to include White House senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law respectively, as well as his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, longtime Trump personal assistant Rhona Graff, former White House chief of staff John Kelly and ex-White House counsel Don McGahn are also on the list, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The letter is a sign Nadler is moving ahead quickly with his investigation, which is the most extensive congressional probe into Trump’s administration and business practices since Democrats took control of the House.

“It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice,” Nadler said Sunday in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week.”

“It’s very clear — 1,100 times he referred to [special counsel Robert Mueller’s] investigation as a witch hunt,” he continued. “He tried to protect [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired [former FBI Director James] Comey in order to stop the ‘Russian thing,’ as he told NBC News. … He’s intimidated witnesses in public.”

Nadler’s letter comes on the heels of former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen’s explosive testimony last week to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, in which he painted the president as a “con man” who engaged in criminality throughout his career in business and in the White House.

Cohen named several of the people expected to receive requests from Nadler during the hearing. A number of them, including Trump Jr. and Kushner, have engaged with other congressional committees in different probes.