To: The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Donald Trump
Demand the full transcripts of Trump's Russia meeting
We demand that the Trump Administration release the transcripts of Trump's meeting with the Russians. If he refuses, the House and Senate intelligence committees must subpoena the transcripts.
Why is this important?
Among the revelations in Monday evening's bombshell Washington Post report on President Donald Trump disclosing classified information to Russian diplomats is the fact that one U.S. counterterrorism official "called for the problematic portion of Trump's discussion to be stricken from internal memos and for the full transcript to be limited to a small circle of recipients, efforts to prevent sensitive details from being disseminated further or leaked."
Now, amid outrage, calls are growing for that transcript to be released—if not to the public at-large, than at least "to Congress for investigative purposes," as National Memo editor-in-chief Joe Conason wrote Tuesday.
"[T]he House and Senate intelligence committees should request—or if necessary, subpoena—the transcripts of Trump's meeting with the Russians, to see who is telling the truth," Conason insisted. "To paraphrase Trump, that may be the only way to 'find out what the hell is going on'."
In turn, he continued, it may be the only way to see if there are grounds for impeachment. (Notably, U.S. press was not allowed into the meeting between Trump and the Russian officials.)