POOL

Washington - 9 May 2019

1. Sen. Mark Warner shakes hands with breakfast participants

2. SOUNDBITE (English) Reporter:

"I want to ask you about the, your committee's subpoena to Donald Trump, Junior. Given that it's highly unlikely that Mr. Trump will appear before your committee in person, what was the point of issuing the subpoena?"

3. SOUNDBITE (English) Sen. Mark Warner, (D) Virginia:

"I'm not going to, as those of you who trail after me on the hill on a regular basis, I'm not going to talk about our process of which witnesses we've called before us, what we will do on a going forward basis. You can ask that as many ways as you'd like and kind of give, stay with the same answer. I would point out that the witnesses we've called early in the investigation, we've always reserved the right to call them back and many of those witnesses, even significant ones, have have come back because I think they feel, my sense is an obligation to allow us to finish this this effort."

4. People eating breakfast

5. SOUNDBITE (English) Sen. Mark Warner, (D) Virginia:

"The remarkable thing is almost every path we've led to, has opened up more people, more contacts, more connections. I guess on a good news, bad news, 90 to 95% of what Mueller had determined in terms of the contacts and the effort of the Russians to interfere in our elections, we had that information and we will have other areas that will frankly be much more extensive than what Mueller had and much more, much more descriptive about the organized ongoing effort."

6. Wide of breakfast table

7. SOUNDBITE (English) Sen. Mark Warner, (D) Virginia:

"One we have to finish our investigation before we write the report and we have to get all of the answers from folks that we've called or want to call back or continuing information. We also I don't know how you would kind of finish that without and I think we, unlike other committees because of our intelligence oversight responsibilities, because this was a counterintelligence investigation, need to see the underlying evidence that we may not have collected that Mueller has. Because if what we're tasked with is is less, a finding on the very a c-word descriptions and more a finding on saying how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And if we can't get all of the evidence that Mueller had in terms of counterintelligence then we can't make the kind of report and recommendations that we need to make in terms of how we prevent this from happening. (Reporter) Have you asked for that? (Warner) We are, we are, our requests for information are very, very extensive and we've tried to cover all our bases."

8. Reporter listening

The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, would not comment on whether the panel had issued a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr. but said the committee is going to "follow the truth wherever it leads."

Two people familiar with the subpoena who discussed it on condition of anonymity say the Senate intelligence committee has subpoenaed Trump Jr., calling him in to answer questions about his 2017 testimony to the panel as part of its probe into Russian election interference.

It's the first known subpoena of a member of President Donald Trump's immediate family, and a new sign that the Senate panel is continuing with its own Russia investigation even after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the same subject.

It's unclear if Trump Jr. will comply with the subpoena from the committee, which is chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.

A person close to the president's eldest son, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, said Wednesday that Trump has continued to cooperate by producing documents and answering written questions.

Warner, said the committee reserves the right to call witnesses back if they see inconsistencies in testimony. Warner made the comments at a breakfast Thursday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Warner said that the intelligence panel also wants to see the underlying evidence in Mueller's report, a request that House lawmakers have also made. Trump on Wednesday invoked the principle of executive privilege over that material, claiming the right to block lawmakers from receiving it.

Warner said his panel knew about "90 to 95 percent" of the Russian contacts mentioned in Mueller's report, and in other areas the committee had "much more extensive" information.