Schiff: Michael Cohen will be called to testify when Dems control House
Former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will be one of the first people called to testify to Congress when Democrats take control of the House in January, said Rep. Adam Schiff, who is expected to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Schiff, in a "CBS This Morning" interview Wednesday, said he expects Cohen to "come in very soon" to testify to the committee. He said it was not clear at this point whether it would be public or private testimony.
Cohen was of "core interest to the special counsel, which means he will be of core interest to us as well," Schiff said. A longtime member of the President Trump's inner circle, Cohen was sentenced last week to three years in prison.
Schiff added that when he becomes chairman he is going to work to have transcripts released from interviews the committee has already done as it looks into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. "We want to make sure the special counsel has access to those transcripts," Schiff said, and he wants the transcripts to be made public as well.
Addressing another high-interest issue, Schiff said Facebook and other technology companies should expect more government regulation. That warning came amid a report that Facebook has given technology companies more access to its users' data than it had previously said. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Facebook gave Microsoft's Bing search engine access to the names of all Facebook users' friends without consent, and allowed Netflix and Spotify access to Facebook users' private messages.
"It certainly looks like the days of Congress essentially deeming the high-tech industry as off limits, beyond the power to regulate — that these are new, growing industries that we don't want to constrain in terms of their innovation — those days are over," Schiff said. "They're behemoths now, they are well established, and there are well-established problems, privacy being chief among them."