Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is one of 81 Trump-associated individuals and entities from which the House Judiciary Committee made sweeping document requests | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Congress Lawyer: Prosecutors advise Gates not to cooperate with House probe yet

Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates — a central cooperating witness for special counsel Robert Mueller — has been advised by prosecutors not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee's broad investigation of President Donald Trump, his lawyer told lawmakers in a recent letter obtained Wednesday by POLITICO.

But Gates' lawyer, Thomas Green, left open the possibility of assisting the panel "in the coming months."


"Having received input from the various prosecution offices, I have concluded that for the time being it is not in the interest of my client to provide testimony of documents to Congressional investigators," Green wrote, adding, "Our position in this regard may well be different in the coming months."

Green's letter was also copied to the House and Senate intelligence committees, which had also requested Gates' testimony.

The decision to delay immediate cooperation with the Democrat-led investigation comes days after Mueller signaled that Gates is still cooperating in multiple investigations. Gates was a key witness in the Virginia trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort last summer.

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Gates is one of 81 Trump associates and entities from whom the House Judiciary Committee made sweeping document requests, part of a wide-ranging examination of allegations of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and other improper actions.

The panel received more than a dozen responses on Monday and Tuesday, including thousands of pages of files from former national security adviser Michael Flynn's lobbying firm. Flynn, who is awaiting sentencing after his 2017 guilty plea to lying to the FBI, submitted documents that matched the files he also turned over to the House and Senate intelligence committees' investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to committee sources.

The committee also made separate document requests of Flynn and his son Michael Flynn Jr. It’s unclear whether the documents from the Flynn Intel Group also cover the two men.

American Media, the parent company of the National Enquirer, confirmed late Tuesday that it plans to fully cooperate with the Judiciary Committee probe, giving the panel a window into files connected to allegations of hush money paid to a woman accusing Trump of an extramarital affair. Other witnesses who provided documents include former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Trump confidant Thomas Barrack and the National Rifle Association.

The submissions, in addition to others that began arriving at the committee beginning late Monday, form the basis of the sweeping probe — led by committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) — that the White House has assailed as a “witch hunt” and an overly broad attempt to undermine Trump. Democrats say the investigation is required oversight of the Trump administration and the president’s actions that Republicans failed to conduct when they controlled the House.

The committee is running into some roadblocks. In addition to Gates, at least four of the 81 witnesses indicated they had no documents to provide or declined to participate in the panel's probe.

Dennis Vacco, an attorney for Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign aide who had publicly rejected cooperating with Nadler's investigation, said Caputo had no documents responsive to the committee's wide-ranging request. He said that the committee's lawyer, Barry Berke, asked if Caputo were willing to be interviewed and that he told him he would not make his client available.

"He has already testified under oath twice," Vacco noted, referring to Caputo's appearances before the House and Senate intelligence committees in 2017 and 2018. Caputo also testified for three hours to Mueller's team, he added. Vacco suggested the committee obtain Caputo's transcript from the House Intelligence Committee.

Former Trump legal team spokesman Mark Corallo also declined to provide documents, saying his communications "are protected by the attorney client privilege," according to another letter obtained by POLITICO. "To the extent I possess responsive documents, I understand they are subject to the attorney client or work product privileges," he wrote.

Anatoli Samochornov, a translator who was one of eight participants in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., told the committee that he possessed no documents responsive to the panel's inquiry. And Christopher Burnham, a Trump transition team member, said he had no documents to produce.

"Mr. Burnham is unclear as to why the Committee has identified him as a potential source of information regarding matters to which he was not involved, nor has any personal knowledge," his lawyer, Stephen Larson, wrote. Larson said Burnham would fully cooperate but has no relevant files for the committee investigation.

The Trump campaign confirmed it had responded to the committee but would not say whether it provided documents. “We have communicated our response to the committee,” said a campaign official who declined to speak publicly.

The official pointed to the campaign's March 4 statement, which accused House Democrats of overreach. The campaign did not respond to questions about whether campaign manager Brad Parscale had responded to the committee, which asked him for additional information.

POLITICO reached out to nearly all of the 81 people and entities or their attorneys. Dozens have declined to respond to requests for comment, including lawyers for former Trump aides Sean Spicer — who has pledged publicly to cooperate with the committee — Reince Priebus and Corey Lewandowski. Former White House communications director Hope Hicks will cooperate with the inquiry.

Also among the 81 Trump-connected entities and people: the White House, the Trump Organization and Trump’s adult sons, Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Lawyers for all four declined to respond to inquiries about whether they’re cooperating with the probe.

On Tuesday, Republican aides to the committee confirmed that the panel had received more than 8,000 pages of documents from at least eight individuals and entities, the vast majority of which came from the NRA, Bannon and Barrack. Others confirmed to POLITICO they had submitted documents as well; Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of onetime Trump campaign data firm Cambridge Analytica, confirmed through an attorney that she had shipped documents to the panel on Monday.

