House committee to question former Trump bodyguard over Russia dossier: report

The House Intelligence Committee is set to question President Trump’s former bodyguard of two decades on the details of Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow, as well as the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Keith Schiller has been summoned to appear before the House panel on Tuesday, where lawmakers will press him on Trump’s 2013 trip, which is detailed in the infamous, unverified dossier compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. 

The dossier, intended as 2016 campaign opposition research, was initiated by Republicans but eventually taken over by Democrats.

The company that hired Steele, Fusion GPS, received $1.02 million from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign.

{mosads}“The White House is delighted that Mr. Schiller will have an opportunity to shed some light on these scandalous allegations, and we are sure that his testimony will be of great interest to all fair-minded people,” White House lawyer Ty Cobb said in a statement to the Post. 

The dossier claims that Kremlin officials have “kompromat,” meaning compromising material, against the president. 

The president and the White House have dismissed the document as fake. 

Trump told The New York Times in July that Schiller would dismiss the claims about the Moscow trip, saying “He said, ‘What kind of crap is this?’ I went there for one day for the Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back.”

The committee is also set to question Schiller about Comey’s firing, given his role in delivering the president’s termination letter to Comey. 

The report comes as the federal and congressional probes into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials are heating up. 

Special counsel Robert Mueller revealed this week that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Richard Gates are charged with conspiracy against the U.S. and money laundering. 

Mueller also revealed that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in early October to misleading the FBI about his contact with Russian actors.