House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on Sunday that Congress is looking to obtain President Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid allegations that the White House is attempting to hide calls with foreign leaders.
“The paramount need here is to protect the national security of the United States and see whether, in the conversations with other world leaders and, in particular, with Putin, that the president was also undermining our security in a way that he thought would personally benefit his campaign,” Schiff said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“If those conversations with Putin or with other world leaders are sequestered in that same electronic file that is meant for covert action, not meant for this, if there’s an effort to hide those and cover those up, yes, we’re determined to find out,” he added.
A whistleblower complaint alleges the Trump administration put a conversation Trump had with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on a highly classified server. A partial transcript of the call shows Trump asking Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic candidate, and his son.
The House launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump last week after the new allegations over the call with Ukraine emerged.
Trump has defended the call, saying there was nothing inappropriate about it.