The House Intelligence Committee came out swinging Tuesday night against Felix Sater, following a lengthy interview with the former business associate of President Donald Trump.
The closed-door appearance was expected to cap a protracted back-and-forth between Sater and the committee, which has rescheduled his testimony several times since he was first slated to appear in March.
But in a rare statement following the interview, a committee spokesman accused Sater of being uncooperative and obstructing the panel’s investigation by withholding documents and testimony in defiance of a subpoena.
“While we do not typically comment on closed interviews, given Mr. Sater’s public comments that he has fully cooperated with the Committee and answered every question asked of him, we must correct the record,” said the spokesman, Patrick Boland. “Mr. Sater has not fully cooperated with the Committee, and he will remain under subpoena until he does so.”
Among the evidence the panel asked for but didn’t receive, according to Boland, were unredacted phone records and documents related to a joint defense agreement with Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
Cohen and Sater worked on the now-defunct Trump Tower Moscow project together through at least June 2016. Cohen is serving a three-year prison sentence in part for lying to the Intelligence Committee about the timing of those negotiations.
Sater’s lawyer Robert Wolf said his client was asked for communications dealing with Cohen’s false statements to the committee about the project in 2017, which involved emails between Cohen and lawyers representing various Trump associates.
Wolf said he told the panel that those communications were privileged but would not comment on whether a joint defense agreement was in place.“The attorney-client privilege is to be honored, enforced, and protected," Wolf told POLITICO. He noted that Sater wouldn’t have been privy to those conversations among the lawyers anyway.
In his statement, Boland said the panel’s probe had uncovered no proof that Sater was part of a joint defense agreement, and therefore ‘has no basis to assert this privilege over these documents.”
“The Committee will continue to pursue documents and testimony related to obstruction of the Committee’s investigation,” he added. Wolf insisted that Sater had voluntarily provided the requested documents that he had in his possession.
The committee issued the subpoena after Sater failed to appear for a voluntary hearing last month because he was sick and slept through his alarm, he told POLITICO at the time.
Sater has testified several times in the last year about issues related to the Trump Tower Moscow project, which has been a central focus of the Democrat-led committee’s investigation into whether Trump is compromised by foreign actors.
Trump did not disclose the ongoing Trump Tower Moscow negotiations while he was running for president in 2015 and 2016, and repeatedly claimed during the campaign that he has “nothing to do with Russia.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine