Commenting on Steve Bannon’s Tuesday meeting with the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Chris Collins said he would be inclined to answer lawmakers’ questions if he were in the hotseat.
“If I was called into a Senate committee to answer questions, I would answer them,” Collins told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time.”
Collins was the first Republican member of Congress to endorse Trump in 2016.
Moments before Collins spoke with Cuomo, Rep. Adam Schiff — the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee — had come out of the meeting that lasted more than 10 hours. Schiff accused the President’s former chief strategist of agreeing to a White House-imposed “gag order,” a restriction on the answers he could give to the committee’s questions.
Collins himself stopped short of accusing the White House of issuing any such order on Bannon, noting that he is not in the “inner circle” on these matters.
“Well, all I can say is that the folks that are giving legal advice to the President and others have their reasons for doing what they are,” Collins said.