Michael Caputo, who served as a communications adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, has been asked by the House committee investigating Russian election meddling to submit to a voluntary interview and to provide any documents he may have that are related to the inquiry.
The House Intelligence Committee, which is examining possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, made its request in a letter May 9. Caputo, who lives near Buffalo, N.Y., and spent six months on the Trump team, worked in Russia during the 1990s and came to know Kremlin officials. He also did work in the early 2000s for Gazprom Media, a Russian conglomerate that supported President Vladimir Putin.
Caputo has strongly denied that there was any collusion between him or anyone else on the campaign and Russian officials. He has also accused the committee of smearing him.
A Democratic member of the panel, Rep. Jackie Speier of California, raised Caputo's name during the March 20 hearing where James Comey, then the FBI director, testified on Russia's interference in the election. She noted Caputo's work for Gazprom and the fact that he met his second wife, who is Ukrainian, while working in 2007 on a parliamentary election in Kiev.
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Caputo is the latest in a string of Trump campaign officials who have been approached by the committee. He is a protege of Roger Stone, one of Trump's longest-serving advisers and one of the people who has been a focus of investigators' interest. Stone has also denied having any contact with Russian officials.
The panel's letter asked Caputo to "produce documents and other materials to the committee and participate in a voluntary transcribed interview at the committee's offices," according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.
It asked for "any documents, records, electronically stored information including email, communication, recordings, data and tangible things" that could "reasonably lead to the discovery of any facts within the investigation's publicly announced parameters."
The committee said it wanted to discuss with Caputo a number of topics, "including Russian cyberactivities directed against the 2016 U.S. election, potential links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns, the U.S. government's response to these Russian active measures, and related leaks of classified information."
Caputo has denounced the allegations for months on social media and said he tried to contact Speier the day after she mentioned him and his wife in the hearing.
In a written response to the committee, Caputo, who said he plans to comply with its request, said, "At no time during this period did I have any contact with Russian government officials or employees." He said he did not discuss Russia with anyone else in the campaign, including Trump, during his employment from November 2015 to June 2016.
"The only time the president and I talked about Russia was in 2013, when he simply asked me in passing what it was like to live there in the context of a dinner conversation," he wrote.
A Section on 05/21/2017