House Democrats clash with Mnuchin following sanctions briefing

House Democrats came out swinging after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin briefed lawmakers behind closed-doors on Capitol Hill about the decision to lift sanctions on companies connected to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted the Thursday briefing as a waste of time, describing it as “one of the worst classified briefings we’ve received from the Trump administration.”

“I went in sympathetic to the process that has been established for sanctions and the relief of sanctions. I came out just unimpressed because of the fact that the secretary of the treasury is here — he barely testified at all,” Pelosi told reporters, adding that they spent “most of the time reading an unclassified document.”

Mnuchin, who was still behind closed doors at the time of her comments, shortly thereafter pushed back against her claims, saying he had made himself readily available to answer any of their questions and that he quickly accommodated Democrats’ briefing request.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/424849-house-democrats-clash-with-mnuchin-following-sanctions-briefing