Thread: House Inquiry Turns Attention to Trump Campaign Worker With Russia Ties

House Inquiry Turns Attention to Trump Campaign Worker With Russia Ties

By MAGGIE HABERMAN
MAY 20, 2017

Michael Caputo, who served as a communications adviser to the Trump campaign, has been asked by the House committee investigating Russian election meddling to submit to a voluntary interview and to provide any documents he may have that are related to the inquiry.

The House Intelligence Committee, which is examining possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, made its request in a letter on May 9. Mr. Caputo, who lives near Buffalo and spent six months on the Trump team, worked in Russia during the 1990s and came to know Kremlin officials. He also did work in the early 2000s for Gazprom Media, a Russian conglomerate that supported President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Caputo has strongly denied that there was any collusion between him or anyone else on the campaign and Russian officials. He has also accused the committee of smearing him.

A Democratic member of the panel, Representative Jackie Speier of California, raised Mr. Caputo’s name during the March 20 hearing where James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, testified on Russia’s interference in the election. She noted Mr. Caputo’s work for Gazprom, and the fact that he met his second wife, who is Ukrainian, while working in 2007 on a parliamentary election in Kiev.

Mr. Caputo is the latest in a string of Trump campaign officials who have been approached by the committee. He is a protégé of Roger J. Stone Jr., one of President Trump’s longest-serving advisers and one of the people who has been a focus of investigators’ interest. Mr. Stone has also denied having any contact with Russian officials.

The panel’s letter asked Mr. Caputo to “produce documents and other materials to the committee and participate in a voluntary transcribed interview at the committee’s offices,” according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.

It asked for “any documents, records, electronically stored information including email, communication, recordings, data and tangible things” that could “reasonably lead to the discovery of any facts within the investigation’s publicly announced parameters.”

The committee said it wanted to discuss with Mr. Caputo a number of topics, “including Russian cyberactivities directed against the 2016 U.S. election, potential links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns, the U.S. government’s response to these Russian active measures, and related leaks of classified information.”

Mr. Caputo has denounced the allegations for months on social media, and said he tried to contact Ms. Speier the day after she mentioned him and his wife in the hearing.

In a written response to the committee, Mr. Caputo, who said he plans to comply with its request, said, “At no time during this period did I have any contact with Russian government officials or employees.” He said he did not discuss Russia with anyone else on the campaign, including Mr. Trump, during his employment from November 2015 to June 2016.

“The only time the president and I talked about Russia was in 2013, when he simply asked me in passing what it was like to live there in the context of a dinner conversation,” he wrote.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/u...sia-trump.html

It's McCarthyism all over again.

Republicans .... do you have no common sense? You must stop the members of Congress trying to interfere in our democracy by trying to intimidate campaign workers, political supporters, political appointees, White House staff and hell maybe even voters! You can't ask someone to testify before your committee on the simple basis that they worked in a foreign country almost 30 years ago or married someone from the Ukraine.

When Trump gets back, he needs to immediately schedule a visit to Moscow, establish his new peace plan with Russia, and then address the nation on the absolute stupidity of the incompetent FBI, the Obama-filled DOJ, the conflicted of interest Special Counsel, and the outright plain as day violations of our most basic and fundamental civil rights which is to work in government, to vote freely in elections, to campaign for our candidates and to work on political campaigns without fear of reprisal from the Congress, the FBI, the DOJ or any other lawyer-loon-lead Coup D'Etat.

If any of you had a brain with two live cells still connected, you would be ordering SEC investigations of Sherman Anti-Trust Violations by the CORRUPT MEDIA to try and swing the 2016 Election to Hillary Clinton through illegal plots, schemes and anti-competition behavior that impacts their earnings and sales. It's clear illegal collusion for money.