WASHINGTON — Top Republican and Democratic senators pledged Tuesday to deepen their investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election in the wake of Michael Flynn’s resignation as President Trump’s national security adviser, opening a new and potentially uncomfortable chapter in the uneasy relationship between Trump and Capitol Hill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said such an investigation is “highly likely,” and the top two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., stood side by side Tuesday to announce that the committee’s ongoing probe must include an examination of any contacts between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government.
Flynn resigned late Monday after revelations of potentially illegal contacts with Russia last year and misleading statements about the communication to senior Trump administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence.
FRUSTRATION AND FEAR
“We are aggressively going to continue the oversight responsibilities of the committee as it relates to not only the Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but again any contacts by any campaign individuals that might have happened with Russian government officials,” said Burr, the chairman of the intelligence panel.
Added Warner, the vice chairman, “The press reports are troubling, and the sooner we can get to the veracity of those press reports or not, then we’ll take the next appropriate step.”
The consensus among lawmakers came at a tense moment, when congressional Republicans were already finding it difficult to defend Trump as the tempestuous start to his term has stoked frustration, fatigue and fear on Capitol Hill.
Many congressional Republicans have endured Trump’s unpredictability – including his criticism of the federal judiciary, and an immigration order that caught them by surprise and drew intense national blowback and a legal rebuke – because they think he holds the key to passing laws they have talked about for years.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of House members, put it this way: “I would rather accomplish something with distractions than not accomplish anything with smooth sailing.”
Burr and Warner’s agreement is also striking given the partisan feuding that has characterized investigations into Russia and the election – and relationships on Capitol Hill generally. The two senators were initially at odds over whether the committee’s probe should include potential ties between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government, with Burr suggesting that it was outside the panel’s purview.
On Tuesday, Burr defended the committee’s right to look at those potential contacts, including any that may have occurred before Trump’s inauguration. And he has the support of Senate Republican leadership; in addition to McConnell, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the majority whip, and Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican conference vice chairman, also called for investigations into Flynn’s actions.
Their pronouncements contrasted sharply with remarks by Republicans in the House, who applauded Flynn’s resignation but for the most part stopped short of calling for further investigation.
“I’ll leave it up to the administration to describe the circumstances surrounding what brought Flynn to this point,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters.
FBI DRAWS SCRUTINY
Some took aim elsewhere. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the most significant question posed by Flynn’s resignation is why intelligence officials eavesdropped on his calls with the Russian ambassador and later leaked information on those calls to the news media.
“I expect for the FBI to tell me what is going on, and they better have a good answer,” Nunes said. “The big problem I see here is that you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded.”
Democrats cautiously applauded plans to expand the Senate investigation, even though several of them had called for an independent probe run by a special prosecutor. McConnell and Republicans will certainly have more control over an in-house investigation, but even Warner said he favors that approach.
“Not only do we have oversight over intelligence and counterintelligence, but it works in a bipartisan basis,” Warner told reporters.
Many Democrats think the slow, painstaking but largely public process of an independent commission, such as the 9/11 Commission, is preferable to leaving the investigation in the hands of committees that work in secret, giving leaders more latitude to pull political strings.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for “unbiased” law enforcement officials to lead a federal investigation, adding that Attorney General Jeff Sessions cannot be involved in any probe given his close political connections to the White House and Trump’s presidential campaign.
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