⁍ A congressional panel has been asked to postpone a closed door deposition with a former Department of Homeland Security intelligence chief.

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⁍ But Adam Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said on Friday his panel was ‘rejecting the Department’s attempt to limit the scope of its investigation

– The House Intelligence Committee has asked the Department of Homeland Security to postpone a closed-door deposition with Brian Murphy, the former head of the DHS intelligence office who says he was told to stop providing assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 election because it “made the president look bad,” Reuters reports. Murphy, who filed a whistleblower complaint against DHS acting chief Chad Wolf in September, says Wolf told him to play down white supremacist activity and to stop providing assessments of the threat of Russian interference in the election. In his complaint, Murphy says he refused to comply with Wolf’s instructions. Murphy’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, said Friday that Murphy’s deposition with the committee booked for Monday “is going to be rescheduled.” A committee official said the panel had not rescheduled the deposition at this time, but that DHS was continuing to impose needless requirements on Mr. Murphy for the purpose of delay. Zaid said DHS was working on arranging security clearances for legal counsel. “DHS needs to allow Mr. Murphy to have immediate access to the relevant classified information that supports his whistleblower complaint,” Zaid said. Schiff said in a letter to DHS that it “should reverse its position immediately and grant Mr. Murphy access to these classified records prior to his deposition.” He added that he expected DHS to provide his committee with ‘responsive records, including classified documents’ and said any DHS effort to prevent the witnesses from fully preparing for testimony would be ‘viewed as obstruction’ of the committee’s investigation.