Republican Congressman calls for independent prosecutor to investigate Donald TrumpSpicer’s latest misdirection on Russia got refuted before he even ended his presser
The White House really wants this story to go away.
... “I guess my question would be, special prosecutor for what?” Spicer said. “We have now for six months heard story after story come out about unnamed sources saying the same thing over and over again, and nothing has come of it… so at what point, you have got to ask yourself, what are you investigating?”
“I think that both the House and Senate have looked at it, you know as well as I do that the intelligence community has looked at it as well,” he continued. “The president has spoken forcefully time and time again that he has no interests in Russia, he hasn’t talked with people in Russia in years… the reporting I’m seeing in different organizations suggests that there’s nothing new that’s being reported. It’s the same stuff over and over again that we’ve heard literally for six months.”
... But Spicer mischaracterized what we know about the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia and how the administration has responded as more information has emerged. Leakers within the intelligence community told reporters earlier this month that the Trump campaign was regularly in contact with Russian officials at the same time Russia was trying to manipulate the presidential election in Trump’s favor. Axios reported on Monday that Spicer, in an “unusual” move, personally enlisted Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC), House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA), and CIA Director Mike Pompeo in efforts to quash that story before it was published....
In short, many important questions remain unanswered. The effort administration officials have made to deceive the public and manipulate an ongoing investigation suggests someone is hiding something. And despite Spicer claim that recent reports are simply “same stuff over and over again,” news of all of the aforementioned developments broke in the handful of weeks since Trump took office.
Before Spicer’s presser was even done, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee — refuted Spicer’s claim that “both the House and Senate have looked” into the Trump’s campaign’s possible collusion with Russian officials who were seeking to interfere in the presidential election.
During a news conference of his own, Schiff said his committee has “reached no conclusion, nor could we, in terms of issues of collusion because we haven’t called in a single witness or reviewed a single document on that issue as of yet.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself.