The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee accused President Donald Trump on Sunday of trying to divert Congress from its investigations of Russia’s role in the 2016 USA election and any links between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
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But Spicer, in contrast to weeks of outrage he has expressed from the White House podium, said he would not comment on a new report that Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, had requested that the intelligence community provide her with names of Trump associates whose conversations with foreigners were incidentally intercepted.
Both the House and Senate intelligence committees, along with the FBI, are investigating the reports of Russian interference and possible collusion.
Schiff has called for Nunes to step down from his role leading the committee’s investigation into alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
After Snow showed footage of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer mentioning what Farkas said, which led to a heated back and forth with reporters, Farkas made more excuses.
State Of The Union host Jake Tapper asked Schiff about the documents that he viewed at the White House. And I think his tweets tell the story. Then there was Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, sharing information with the White House, because it might defuse the Obama wiretapping controversy, that he kept from his committee. If the white house had any concern about whether minimization was used properly or how it was handled, that is material that should be given to us in the ordinary course of affairs.
The White House acknowledged in March that President Trump’s transition team was aware before Flynn was tapped to serve as national security adviser that he had engaged in work that would likely require him to register his consulting firm as a foreign agent.
“The skepticism is, you know, we’ll need to consult with the Justice Department…”
Congress has the authority to grant someone immunity, but doing so could jeopardize the Justice Department’s ability to use that testimony as the basis for any criminal case it might want to bring.
“The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?”.
After viewing the documents a full 10 days after Nunes viewed them, Schiff criticized Nunes for refusing to share them with the full committee. “At this point, I can’t say whether anything was masked or unmasked improperly”, he said. “Can you say definitively that there was collusion, there were people affiliated with the Trump campaign who were working with Russians to time the release of damaging information about Hillary Clinton that had been hacked either from John Podesta or the DNC?”
The President’s tweets “tell the story”, he said, adding that by blaming leaks or his predecessor Barack Obama’s administration, Mr Trump was was saying: “Whatever you do, under no circumstances look here at me or at Russian Federation”.
When US persons are incidentally picked up by intelligence intercepts, their identities are often concealed in reports detailing the findings unless they are relevant to an investigation or are otherwise necessary for analysts to understand what was being discussed.
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“If we’re really going to get to the bottom of these things, it’s got to be done in a bipartisan fashion”, the Arizona Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”.
