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"I Have My Subpoena Pen Ready": Congress Reacts to News Trump May Have Asked FBI to Stop Flynn Probe

by LizzieAppel Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump asked former FBI director James Comey during a February meeting to end the federal investigation into Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The White House denied in a statement that Trump had ever asked Comey or “anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn.”

Since the latest bombshell hit, lawmakers have come out to question whether the president engaged in obstruction of justice—and one senator raised, for the first time, the prospect of impeachment. Here are some of the responses from members of Congress on Tuesday night:

“This reporting, if confirmed, would represent a grave development. The need for a special counsel and an independent commission to investigate the President’s conduct, as it relates to this issue, and his campaign’s possible coordination with Russia is urgent. The stories of the last week raise serious questions about whether the President respects the independence of the FBI and law enforcement authorities. It is vital that Congress obtain these memos and hear public testimony from former Director Comey. No one, not even the President, is above the law and the American people deserve answers about President Trump’s conduct.” — Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.)

Meanwhile, a number of Republicans were quick to unleash a flurry of “no comments”:

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Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees sent a letter on Tuesday demanding a full investigation into whether Trump and his top officials engaged in an “ongoing conspiracy to obstruct” federal and congressional investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

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We will continue updating this post as more members of Congress weigh in.

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"I Have My Subpoena Pen Ready": Congress Reacts to News Trump May Have Asked FBI to Stop Flynn Probe

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Republican Senator Doesn’t Want to Run Trump’s FBI

by EUEJeanaikai Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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One of the leading contenders to replace James Comey as the next director of the FBI withdrew from consideration on Tuesday.

“Now more than ever the country needs a well-credentialed, independent FBI Director,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a statement. “I’ve informed the Administration that I’m committed to helping them find such an individual, and that the best way I can serve is continuing to fight for a conservative agenda in the US Senate.”

Cornyn was one of several candidates who interviewed for the position last weekend after President Donald Trump unceremoniously fired Comey on May 9. During an interview last week, the president said Comey was a “showboat” and a “grand-stander” and said that the “Russia thing” was on his mind as he decided to fire the head of the FBI.

The prospect of Cornyn—or any other partisan politician—running the FBI as it investigates the sitting president gave those on both sides of the aisle pause. “John Cornyn under normal circumstances would be a superb choice to be FBI director,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last weekend. “But these are not normal circumstances.” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, “The nominee should not be a partisan politician, not part of either party.”

Cornyn’s track record with the Trump/Russia matter justified those concerns, as Mother Jones reported Monday. Although the Texas senator has said the investigation should go on, he has devoted more of his attention to leaks from intelligence sources to the media. He’s also focused on the “unmasking” of disgraced former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, which Trump supporters have said supports the argument that President Barack Obama had Trump under surveillance during the campaign. Cornyn has also said that the idea that Trump fired Comey because of the FBI’s Russia investigation was a “phony narrative.” He has resisted calls for a special prosecutor in the Russia case even though he wanted one for the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

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Republican Senator Doesn’t Want to Run Trump’s FBI

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The White House Won’t Deny the Facts of Latest Russia Scandal But Says It’s False Anyway

by RaulBrooks Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Washington Post set off a political firestorm when it reported that President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in their White House meeting on May 10. Current and former US officials told the Post that the disclosure jeopardized a valuable source of intelligence on ISIS. The paper quoted one official as saying that Trump had “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

On Monday evening, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster read a confusing statement to the press that appeared to deny the Post’s report. “The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false,” he said, adding that “at no time—at no time—were intelligence sources or methods discussed.” Multiple news outlets soon pointed out that McMaster’s verbal gymnastics seemed to be a classic “nondenial denial.” That is, McMaster appeared to be denying information that wasn’t actually reported by the Post in the first place. The Post had not claimed that “intelligence sources or methods” were discussed; the paper had simply reported that the information discussed could be used to discern intelligence sources or methods.

Trump, for his part, appeared to muddy the waters further Tuesday morning when he took to Twitter to defend his actions. Unlike McMaster, Trump didn’t even purport to dispute the Post‘s reporting:

Later Tuesday, McMaster appeared before the press yet again in an attempt to clear up the situation. Asked about his Monday claim that the Post story was “false,” McMaster said, “I stand by my statement that I made yesterday.” But he then went on to suggest that he wasn’t actually claiming the facts in the story were wrong. Rather, he said it was the “premise” of the article that was false. According to McMaster, “What I’m saying is really the premise of that article is false—that in any way the president had a conversation that was inappropriate or that resulted in any kind of lapse in national security.”

In other words, McMaster wasn’t disputing any of the details in the Post‘s report; he was simply saying the president’s actions were somehow appropriate. McMaster refused to say whether or not the information the president shared with Lavrov and Kislyak was classified. But he repeated several times that Trump’s decision to share the material was “wholly appropriate.”

And why does McMaster think Trump’s statements to the Russians were appropriate? Because, McMaster seemed to imply, the president can decide to share whatever he wants. “As you know,” he said, “it is wholly appropriate for the president to share whatever information he thinks is necessary to advance the security of the American people. That’s what he did…He made the decision in the context of the conversation, which was wholly appropriate.”

McMaster added that Trump wasn’t even aware that the information apparently came from a sensitive intelligence source:

So there you have it: The Post story is “false” because Trump’s statement’s were “appropriate,” and Trump’s statement’s were “appropriate” because he’s the president.

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The White House Won’t Deny the Facts of Latest Russia Scandal But Says It’s False Anyway

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Report: Trump Divulged “Highly Classified” Information to Russian Ambassador

by SylvesterAyf Posted on May 15, 2017

Mother Jones

Days after President Donald Trump met with top-level Russian diplomats last week—an Oval Office meeting that was closed to American media—the Washington Post reports the president shared “highly classified” information with both the Russian ambassador and foreign minister—allegations based on accounts provided to the Post by anonymous “current and former U.S. officials.”

According to the Post, this sensitive information concerned “elements of a specific plot” by the Islamic State:

The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

As the Post notes, the president has broad authority to declassify pieces of information at his choosing, but “for most anyone in government, discussing such matters with an adversary would be illegal.” (The National Security Agency and the CIA declined to provide comment to the Post.)

Two US officials confirmed the Post’s account to BuzzFeed News late Monday afternoon, with one official adding that “it’s far worse than what has already been reported.”

Head to the Washington Post for the full account.

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Report: Trump Divulged “Highly Classified” Information to Russian Ambassador

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Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

by JosieWilbur Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

There are multiple investigations of the Trump-Russia scandal underway, including two conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, one by a Senate judiciary subcommittee, and one (or more) by the FBI. They cover a range of issues: Vladimir Putin’s secret operation to subvert the 2016 campaign to help Donald Trump win, interactions between Trump associates and Russia, ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador (and how the White House handled that controversy, as well as Flynn’s acceptance of foreign payments from Russia and other nations and his other business dealings), and, possibly, the business- and lobbying-related actions of Paul Manafort, who managed Trump’s campaign, and other people close to Trump. Now there is a need for a new investigation that focuses on Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey.

This could well be the most serious inquiry of all because it would raise the sensitive issue of impeachment.

When Trump pink-slipped Comey on Tuesday, his Justice Department released a three-page letter with reasons why Comey should be booted. The justifications were all related to how he managed the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails at the State Department. The criticisms were familiar and old: Comey had gone too far when he first held a press conference in July to declare the investigation was over but harshly criticized Clinton and then informed Congress days before the election that his agents had revived the investigation to review a newly found cache of Clinton emails (which turned out to hold essentially no new information). Of course, Trump enthusiastically praised Comey for his October surprise, because it dealt Clinton a blow in the final days and conceivably helped Trump win. But now, suddenly, Comey’s conduct in that episode is supposedly the grounds for Trump showing Comey the door.

The initial news reports tell another story. Various insider accounts—yes, based on anonymous sources—indicate that Trump’s firing of Comey was motivated, at least in part, by Trump’s anger over the ongoing Russia investigation. Politico reports:

Trump had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

And who was the best target for his anger? Comey.

Last month, Comey appeared before the House intelligence committee, and his testimony put Trump in a bad spot. Comey noted that the FBI had no information to support Trump’s baseless charge that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump before the election. He was practically calling Trump a nut or a liar. Then Comey, in an unprecedented move, revealed that the FBI had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russia since last July. It was a stunning moment: the FBI chief disclosing his bureau was running an investigation that could lead to his boss, the president. All of this showed the Trump-Russia scandal was still on fire.

Naturally, Trump was enraged. He has dismissed the Russia story as fake news and a hoax. Comey said it was nothing but.

If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment. In fact, the first of the three articles of impeachment filed by the House judiciary committee against Richard Nixon in 1974 was for obstruction of justice. That article listed as one reason for impeachment: “interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees.”

Trump certainly appears to have tried to interfere with the Russia investigation by dismissing Comey.

A congressional investigation of Trump’s action is warranted. There are White House and Justice Department officials who can be questioned on this subject. They can be asked how the firing was discussed and handled by administration officials. (Congress might also want to ask Comey about the President’s claim, in his termination letter to the FBI director, that Comey had assured Trump on three occasions that he was not a target of the bureau’s investigation.) There may be documents to subpoena. (One side issue: how could Attorney General Jeff Sessions participate in this decision, as he did, if he recused himself from anything to do with the Russia investigations because he had lied about his own meetings with the Russian ambassador?)

This is not simply a personnel matter. Trump does have the right to fire Comey. But if this was done to smother an investigation, Trump may have violated the law, defending himself and not the Constitution. He knows why he did this—and presumably so do Sessions and assorted White House and Justice Department officials. Congress needs to step in and guarantee for the American public that the president has not abused his power and obstructed justice to protect himself. And there are several committees in the House and Senate that could assume this critical mission. With Trump’s firing of Comey, the Trump-Russia scandal has moved from a tale of a foreign power undermining American democracy to the story of a president possibly doing the same.

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Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

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Yeah, the Comey Firing Was All About Russia

by GeorgetTurney Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

Politico has a big “inside” look at the Comey firing tonight, and it is bananas:

Trump had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

….Trump had grown angry with the Russia investigation — particularly Comey admitting in front of the Senate that the FBI was investigating his campaign — and that the FBI director wouldn’t support his claims that President Barack Obama had tapped his phones in Trump Tower.

….Trump received letters from Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, calling for Comey’s dismissal…A White House spokesman said Trump did not ask for the letters in advance, and that White House officials had no idea they were coming. But several other people familiar with the events said Trump had talked about the firing for over a week, and the letters were written to give him rationale to fire Comey.

Summary: The Comey firing had nothing to do with the Hillary Clinton email investigation. It was all because Trump was outraged over Comey’s public acknowledgement that the FBI was investigating his Russia ties. He wanted the investigation to disappear, and he began obsessing about firing Comey—presumably in hopes that this was all it would take to kill the case. And apparently Trump was shocked when Democrats didn’t line up behind him. They hate Comey too, don’t they?

Trump’s astronomical ignorance has finally caught up with him. He seems to have had no idea that firing Comey wouldn’t stop the investigation—nor that a new FBI director wouldn’t dare quash it. In fact, all the firing does is make the investigation untouchable. And Trump’s astronomical narcissism has caught up with him too. He has so little insight into other humans that he simply couldn’t conceive of anyone hating Comey but still defending his right to serve out his term. In Trump’s world, you reward your friends and punish your enemies and that’s that.

This is hardly unexpected from Trump, whose ignorance and narcissism are legendary. But does he really have nobody on his staff to warn him about this stuff? Reince Priebus surely knew how this would play out. Ditto for Mike Pence.

And one final thing: once again, we learn that many of Trump’s advisors are perfectly willing to portray him as an idiot. The Politico story is based on conversations with insiders who were happy to confirm that the Comey firing was all about Russia. This directly contradicts the White House narrative that it was about the fact that everyone had lost confidence in Comey because of the way he mistreated poor Hillary Clinton. Who are these people who work for Trump (?) but are happy to undermine him to the press on a regular basis?

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Yeah, the Comey Firing Was All About Russia

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It’s Crunch Time for the Republican Party

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

How the world works, 2017 edition:

July 2016: Republicans are united in outrage when James Comey declines to recommend charges against crooked Hillary Clinton despite mountains of evidence that she is totally guilty.

Today: Republicans are united in disappointment at Comey’s decision to harm poor Hillary Clinton by breaching agency guidelines against commenting on investigations and interfering with an upcoming election. Thank God he’s finally been fired.

The official story about Comey’s firing goes something like this. On April 25, Rod Rosenstein was confirmed as deputy attorney general. It takes him less than two weeks to put together a memo arguing that: Comey was wrong to usurp the attorney general’s prosecutorial authority. He was wrong to hold a “derogatory” press conference about Clinton. He was wrong three months later to claim that keeping quiet about the Huma Abedin emails amounted to “concealing” them. He shouldn’t have said anything on October 28. Rosenstein concludes by saying that everyone from the janitor to the pope agrees that this was obviously egregious behavior on Comey’s part. Within hours, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recommends Comey be fired and Trump immediately announces Comey’s termination. Comey hears about it on TV.

Needless to say, there is precisely nothing new in any of this. As Rosenstein says, these criticisms of Comey have been obvious from the start, and Trump could have used them as justification for firing Comey at any time. But he didn’t. Until now.

The difference between then and now, of course, is that then Comey was helping bury Hillary Clinton, and now Comey is investigating ties between Russia and Trump. So only now is it time for Comey to go.

So far, there are a tiny handful of Republicans who are “troubled” by Comey’s firing. Will they go any farther? Will any more Republicans join them? Or is everyone going to take one for the team and pretend that Comey really was fired because of how badly he treated Hillary Clinton?

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It’s Crunch Time for the Republican Party

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Trump’s CIA Director Just Called WikiLeaks a "Hostile Intelligence Service"

by Carley20G9701 Posted on April 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo on Thursday denounced WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” and he singled out Russia as one of the anti-secrecy organization’s top collaborators. Pompeo is the latest top official in the Trump administration to note that Russia hacked into the emails of Democratic staffers with the intention of influencing the 2016 presidential election. Thousands of those emails were subsequently released by WikiLeaks. The intelligence community has concluded this operation was mounted with Vladimir Putin’s approval and was done to benefit Donald Trump.

Pompeo’s remarks were particularly striking because Trump praised WikiLeaks during the campaign and repeatedly referenced the emails it made public. In other words, Pompeo was saying that his boss encouraged an entity he now considers “hostile” to the United States. Trump has repeatedly referred to the Russia scandal as a hoax, yet Pompeo’s comments are predicated on the assumption there is nothing hoax-y about the Russian attack on the 2016 campaign.

Pompeo’s attack on WikiLeaks was also a touch awkward given that during the 2016 campaign, he cited WikiLeaks to attack the credibility of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party—which was just what Russia wanted. This led to an awkward moment in January, when Pompeo testified before the Senate Intelligence committee:

Pompeo was also caught in a hack-related contradiction. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the committee, pointed to a tweet Pompeo sent out in July declaring, “Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC Leaked by Wikileaks.” King didn’t say this, but his point was obvious: With this tweet, the incoming CIA chief had helped a secret Russian intelligence operation to change the outcome of the presidential election. King did ask Pompeo, “Do you think WikiLeaks is a reliable source of information?” Pompeo replied, “I do not.” So, King inquired, why did he post this tweet and cite WikiLeaks as “proof”? Pompeo was busted. Pompeo repeated that he had never considered WikiLeaks a “credible source.” King pushed on and asked Pompeo how he could explain his tweet. Pompeo stammered and remarked, “I’d have to go back and take a look at that.” Uh, right.

In his remarks Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Pompeo said that “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service.” He then cited various examples of WikiLeaks working against the interests of the United States, including working with Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents in 2010.

“It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is—a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo’s remarks coincide with an apparent shift in the Trump administration’s approach to its relationship with Russia. The White House abruptly adopted a tough stance on Russia’s alliance with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad following Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians last week. The foreign policy reversal comes amid multiple investigations examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible ties between Trump associates and Russians.

During the election, Trump praised WikiLeaks and frequently referred to the organization in his attacks against Hillary Clinton.

“I love WikiLeaks,” he told supporters during an October rally.

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Trump’s CIA Director Just Called WikiLeaks a "Hostile Intelligence Service"

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Watch the Top Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee Explain the Trump-Russia Scandal

by charlenestahl1 Posted on March 30, 2017

Mother Jones

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The US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday convened its first hearing in its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. In stark contrast to the House intelligence committee’s investigation—which has been brought to a halt by the partisan brinksmanship of the panel’s chair, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)—the leaders of the Senate investigation say they are trying to keep things as bipartisan and transparent as possible. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the committee’s vice chairman, used his opening statement to sum up Russia’s election interference—and the ways that Trump associates may have been connected to this Kremlin operation. “We are seeking to determine if there is an actual fire, but there’s clearly a lot of smoke,” Warner said. Read his full statement below:

Today’s hearing is important to help understand the role Russia played in the 2016 presidential elections.

As the U.S. intelligence community unanimously assessed in January of this year, Russia sought to hijack our democratic process, and that most important part of our democratic process, our Presidential elections. As we’ll learn today, Russia’s strategy and tactics are not new, but their brazenness certainly was.

This hearing is also important because it is open, as the chairman mentioned—which is unusual for this Committee. Due to the classified nature of our work, we typically operate behind closed doors.

But today’s public hearing will help, I hope, the American public writ large understand how the Kremlin made effective use of its hacking skills to steal and weaponize information and engage in a coordinated effort to damage a particular candidate and to undermine public confidence in our democratic process.

Our witnesses today will help us to understand how Russia deployed this deluge of disinformation in a broader attempt to undermine America’s strength and leadership throughout the world.

We simply must – and we will – get this right. The Chairman and I agree it is vitally important that we do this as a credible, bipartisan, and transparent a manner as possible. As was said yesterday at our press conference, Chairman Burr and I trust each other, and equally important, we trust our colleagues on this committee that we are going to move together and we are going to get to the bottom of it and get it right.

As this hearing begins, let’s take a minute to review what we know: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a deliberate campaign carefully constructed to undermine our election.

First, Russia struck at our political institutions by electronically breaking into the headquarters of one of our political parties and stealing vast amounts of information. Russian operatives also hacked emails to steal personal messages and other information from individuals ranging from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta to former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

This stolen information was then “weaponized.” We know that Russian intelligence used the “Guccifer 2.0” persona and others like WikiLeaks and seemingly choreographed times that would cause maximum damage to one candidate. They did this with an unprecedented level of sophistication about American presidential politics that should be a line of inquiry for us on this committee and candidly, while it helped one candidate this time, they are not favoring one party over another, and consequently should be a concern for all of us.

Second, Russia continually sought to diminish and undermine our trust in the American media by blurring our faith in what is true and what is not. Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik successfully produced and peddled disinformation to American audiences in pursuit of Moscow’s preferred outcome.

This Russian “propaganda on steroids” was designed to poison the national conversation in America. The Russians employed thousands of paid Internet trolls and bot-nets to push-out disinformation and fake news at high volume, focusing this material onto your Twitter and Facebook feeds and flooding our social media with misinformation.

This fake news and disinformation was then hyped by the American media echo chamber and our own social media networks to reach – and potentially influence – millions of Americans.

This is not innuendo or false allegations. This is not fake news. This is actually what happened to us, and understanding all aspects of this attack is important.

Russia continues these sorts of actions as we speak. Some of our close allies in Europe are experiencing exactly the same kind of interference in their political processes. Germany has said that its Parliament has been hacked. French presidential candidates right now have been the subjects of Russian propaganda and disinformation. In the Netherlands, their recent elections, the Dutch hand-counted their ballots because they feared Russian interference in their electoral process.

Perhaps, most critically for us, there is nothing to stop them from doing this all over again in 2018, for those of you who are up, or in 2020, as Americans again go back to the polls.

In addition to what we already know, any full accounting must also find out what, if any, contacts, communications or connections occurred between Russia and those associated with the campaigns themselves.

I will not prejudge the outcome of our investigation. We are seeking to determine if there is an actual fire, but there’s clearly a lot of smoke. For instance:

• An individual associated with the Trump campaign accurately predicted the release of hacked emails weeks before it happened. This same individual also admits to being in contact with Guccifer 2.0, the Russian intelligence persona responsible for these cyber operations.
• The platform of one of our two major political parties was mysteriously watered-down in a way which promoted the interests of President Putin — and no one seems to be able to identify who directed that change in the platform.
• A campaign manager of one campaign, who played such a critical role in electing the President, was forced to step down over his alleged ties to Russia and its associates.
• Since the election, we have seen the President’s national security advisor resign — and his Attorney General recuse — himself over previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian government.
• And, of course, in the other body, on March 20th, the Director of the FBI publicly acknowledged that the Bureau is “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russian efforts.”

I want to be clear, at least for me: This investigation is not about whether you have a “D” or an “R” next to your name. It is not about re-litigating last fall’s election. It is about clearly understanding and responding to this very real threat.

It’s also, I believe, about holding Russia accountable for this unprecedented attack against our democracy. And it is about arming ourselves so we can identify and stop it when it happens again. And trust me: it will happen again if we don’t take action.

I would hope that the President is as anxious as we are to get to the bottom of what happened. But I have to say editorially, that the President’s recent conduct — with his wild and uncorroborated accusations about wiretapping, and his inappropriate and unjustified attacks on America’s hard-working intelligence professionals — does give me grave concern.

This Committee has a heavy weight of responsibility to prove that we can continue to put our political labels aside and get to the truth. I believe we can get there. I have seen firsthand, and I say this to our audience, how seriously members on both sides of this dais have worked so far on this sensitive and critical issue.

As the Chairman and I have said repeatedly, this investigation will follow the facts where they lead us .If at any time I believe we’re not going to be able to get those facts, and we’re working together very cooperatively to make sure we get the facts we need from the intelligence community, we will get that done.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your commitment to this serious work and your commitment to keeping this bipartisan cooperation, at least, if not all across the hill, alive in this committee. Thank you very much.

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Watch the Top Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee Explain the Trump-Russia Scandal

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How Devin Nunes Is Threatening the Constitution

by MckinleySerrano Posted on March 29, 2017

Mother Jones

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With his bizarre antics and partisan-driven decisions the past week and a half, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the under-siege chairman of the House intelligence committee, has not only triggered a breakdown in the congressional oversight process; he has nearly sparked a constitutional crisis. This may sound hyperbolic, yet Nunes is undermining one of the core principles of the American republic: checks and balances. And there perhaps is no area of government where counterbalance is more needed than national security.

At the heart of the US political system is a bargain. The fundamental notion of the Constitution is that the government serves the citizenry and is accountable to the voters. Yet with the development of the modern national security state—and even before—the executive branch gained the power to engage in secret actions. The spies, covert operators, and eavesdroppers of the intelligence community and the military could perform their duties far from the prying eyes of citizens. This means a vast part of the government operates in secrecy and is free from public scrutiny. How can a democracy allow this? The answer is simple: congressional oversight. In theory, the common folks who are kept in the dark elect senators and representatives who monitor all the secret stuff on their behalf. The Capitol Hill overseers preserve the secrets, but they act as surrogates for the rest of the nation and ensure the covert warriors, spooks, and snoops are acting effectively, honorably, and lawfully in pursuit of the public interest.

That’s the rosy-eyed version. True congressional oversight of the intelligence community didn’t kick in until the 1970s, after a variety of spy-related scandals—secret assassination plots, coups, Watergate, and more. And in the decades since, Capitol Hill monitoring of the intelligence community has sometimes been lackadaisical. (It is almost an impossible task for the House and Senate intelligence committees to track the vast intelligence community, which now consists of 17 agencies.) At other points, there have been conflicts between the committees and the spies. In the 1980s, the late-Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican chair of the Senate intel committee, repeatedly clashed with Bill Casey, Ronald Reagan’s free-wheelin’, law-breakin’ CIA chief. Three years ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the committee, had an explosive confrontation with John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, over her committee’s investigation of CIA torture. But in each case, oversight continued, with the House and Senate panels often displaying a bipartisanship not found in other corners of Congress.

It’s been an imperfect system. In 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper misled the Senate intelligence committee when he publicly testified that US intelligence did not collect data on Americans. (The Edward Snowden revelations showed otherwise, revealing a massive operation to collect metadata regarding the phone records of Americans.) But at the least, the pretense of intelligence oversight from the legislative branch allows for the clandestine operations conducted by the executive branch through intelligence agencies and the military. And this is but one element of the overall oversight Congress is supposed to mount as a check on the president and executive power. Oversight, an implied obligation within the Constitution, is a crucial function of the House and Senate.

Enter Nunes. He has recently demonstrated he cannot function in an independent, nonpartisan, or forthright manner when conducting intelligence oversight. As chair of the House intelligence committee, he is in charge of the panel’s investigation of Vladimir Putin’s attack on the 2016 campaign and the interactions between the Trump camp and Russia. This is a tough and sensitive assignment. Nunes was on Donald Trump’s presidential election team, and now he is probing the actions of Trump’s associates—and perhaps Trump himself—in an exercise that could produce information that threatens the Trump presidency. He is doing so while Trump is essentially waging war on the investigation. (For months, Trump has dismissed or downplayed the intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow assaulted the election to help Trump. On Monday night, Trump tweeted that the Russia story is a “hoax.”) In such a highly charged political environment, it would be challenging for anyone to lead an effective and independent investigation.

Still, Nunes has underperformed. He initially was reluctant to examine contacts between the Trump gang and Moscow. Then, during the committee’s first public hearing (when FBI chief James Comey undercut Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama had illegally spied on him and revealed the bureau was investigating Trump associates for possibly coordinating with Russians), Nunes behaved as a partisan. As if he were channeling Trump, he said virtually nothing about the main issue: Putin covertly intervening in a presidential election. Instead, he fixated on the (bad!) leak that had exposed former national security adviser Michael Flynn as a liar and forced his resignation. Nunes also repeatedly asked Comey if he would investigate Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign, if evidence of contacts between the campaign and Russia emerged. (There has been no evidence of that.) After the hearing, Nunes inexplicably claimed he had never heard of two key figures in the Trump-Russia scandal: Roger Stone and Carter Page.

All of this raised questions about Nunes’ ability to handle an investigation that was scrutinizing people and actions related to the president he supports. Then things got worse. Two days later, Nunes held a surprise press conference—without consulting his staff or fellow members of the intelligence committee—to declare he had reviewed documents indicating that classified intelligence reporting based on lawfully authorized collection aimed at foreign targets might have revealed the identities of Trump transition team members (perhaps Trump himself) who were picked up via what’s known as “incidental collection.” Nunes rushed to the White House to brief Trump, who subsequently declared this “somewhat” validated his claim that Obama had illegally wiretapped him. (It had not.)

The episode appeared to be a stunt designed to provide Trump cover for his baseless charge against Obama—and perhaps to change the channel after the hearing that revealed the FBI investigation. And in the wake of his initial presser, Nunes kept bumbling his descriptions and explanations. It remained unclear if he had uncovered any wrongdoing. He ended up apologizing to his fellow committee members and essentially acknowledged he had gone off half-cocked. He came across as amateurish and erratic. (Three weeks earlier, Nunes had worked with the White House to counter news stories reporting on ties between Trump associates and Russia.)

And there was more. In the middle of this imbroglio, Nunes announced he had canceled the committee’s next public hearing, scheduled for March 28, which was going to feature Clapper, former CIA chief John Brennan, and former Justice Department official Sally Yates, who in January had privately informed the White House that Flynn had lied when he said he had not spoken to the Russian ambassador about the sanctions Obama imposed on Russia as punishment for its hacking-and-leaking operation targeting the Clinton campaign. Nunes offered no good explanation for the scheduling move. (He claimed the committee could not fit in the hearing because of a private session scheduled with Comey and NSA chief Mike Rogers. But when that closed-door hearing was canceled, Nunes did not revive the Clapper-Brennan-Yates hearing.) Democrats on the committee concluded that Nunes had killed the public hearing to spare the Trump White House further embarrassment. That did seem a likely assessment.

By now, Democrats were calling for Nunes to recuse himself from the Russia investigation or quit his post as committee chair, and a handful of Republicans—namely Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham—were questioning Nunes’ actions and ability to handle this probe. It was a shit storm, and it was hard to see how the House committee could proceed with a credible investigation or perhaps continue to function at all. Nunes blew up the bond of trust within the committee. He had acted in an impetuous manner. He seemed to care more about Trump’s political standing than about the investigation. (On Fox News, he explained his actions by saying that Trump has “been taking a lot of heat in the news media.”) He also undermined the committee’s credibility. Citizens looking for answers about the Trump Russia scandal will find it hard to accept any conclusions from Nunes at face value.

So Nunes has harmed one of the key oversight mechanisms in the US government: his own committee. This means the check-and-balance process is weaker. That’s not good at a time when the country faces serious national security issues and other matters and when the overall credibility of government is low. Whether Nunes recuses himself or not—for now, he says he won’t—his committee’s investigation is on the verge of irrelevancy, with its credibility shot. (On Tuesday, Nunes announced he was postponing further witness interviews until Comey returned for a private hearing, putting his probe on hold. This week, he also canceled regular committee meetings.) That leaves only the Senate intelligence committee in the driving seat for the Russia investigation. Its chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, was also reluctant to assume this mission, but so far there has been no open conflict within the committee, and Democratic members say the probe is moving forward. (The Senate committee will hold its first hearings related to this inquiry on Thursday.) The FBI investigation is also proceeding, but whether this is a counterintelligence probe or a criminal inquiry—or both—the investigation is not designed to yield a public accounting. (The FBI does not produce public reports.) That is the job of the congressional committees. Unfortunately, Nunes has essentially and maybe intentionally sidelined his own probe. In doing so, he renders it less likely the American public will learn the full truth. Moreover—and perhaps worse—he has demonstrated that the system designed to provide accountability for secret government might now be unworkable.

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How Devin Nunes Is Threatening the Constitution

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