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House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he would not hesitate to bring former President Barack Obama before a congressional committee to testify on the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation by his administration.
Johnson (R-La.) called recent revelations by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “deeply problematic” and suggested that Obama’s status as a former president wouldn’t shield him from receiving a subpoena, should lawmakers deem it necessary.
“We have no concern about that. If it’s uncomfortable for him, he shouldn’t have been involved in overseeing this, which is what it appears to us has happened,” Johnson told Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody.
Presidential testimony before Congress is rarely sought and and requests are often challenged due to separation of powers concerns.
The two most recent former presidents to appear before Congress were Harry Truman in 1955 and Gerald Ford in 1983.
Last year, then-President Joe Biden turned down an invitation to appear before the House GOP impeachment inquiry against him.
The since-defunct House Jan. 6 Select Committee subpoenaed Trump for testimony in late 2022, but he spurned that demand and didn’t face legal consequences for doing so.
“There’s a lot of allegations on the table. Our job is to go and follow each of those trails and to find out the truth,” Johnson added.
“So those are very serious allegations with very serious implications, but we’re going to have very serious people working on it, and we will get the answers.”
The House speaker also said that “of course,” Republicans will consider pursuing testimony from other Obama administration figures, such as former US Attorney General Eric Holder and former CIA Director John Brennan.
“I think we have a responsibility to follow the truth where it leads and to do it in an unbiased fashion,” the speaker said.
“The greatest threat of all this is not just what they’ve done to President Trump as an individual, it’s what they’re doing to the institutions.”
Last week, Gabbard released more than 100 pages of emails, memos and other documents that she described as evidence of a “years-long coup against President Trump” and a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration.
The documents showed that the intelligence community was prepared to conclude in December 2016 that Russia didn’t hack that year’s presidential election to change its outcome.
However, the FBI dissented from that conclusion “based on some new guidance,” and on Dec. 9, 2016, Obama tasked the intelligence community with producing a “comprehensive assessment” on “Russia election meddling.”
That evaluation culminated in a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller, which found that Russian agents encroached on the 2016 campaign in a “sweeping and systemic fashion,” but there was insufficient evidence that any member of the Trump team had been “taking part in a criminal conspiracy.”
Gabbard has teased that more documents will be released, shedding additional light on the intelligence community’s activities.
“I do expect that whether there’s a special counsel appointed, which some are suggesting, and/or in conjunction with the House investigations, that we will get the answers and there will be accountability to the extent that we’re able to do that, referring people to the DOJ for prosecution,” Johnson said.
Trump has tapped Ed Martin to helm the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, which is looking into Obama administration activity during the transition into Trump’s first term.
A rep for the 44th president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
