House Intel Chair On Trump-Russia Evidence: ‘There’s Nothing There’

If an investigation into Trump came to a full vote before the House, pretty much every Republican that would vote it down would also probably lose their House seat come the 2018 midterm elections.

But Nunes beat back reports that he was enlisted by the White House to refute the Times reporting, saying: “That didn’t happen”. So here you have the White House actually trying to communicate with many of you, and the White House trying to communicate with the congress what they’re doing, and now suddenly that’s wrong.

Nunes says he reached out to the administration and Australian officials after the Washington Post published a read out of Trump’s call with the Australian Prime Minister.

Former President Barack Obama in December imposed sanctions on top Russian intelligence officials and agencies in retaliation for cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the 2016 election campaign.

Nunes later criticized reporters for being concerned about his coordination with the White House.

“If that is just what General Flynn did, to try and keep the lines of communications open”, he said.

Still, Nunes also admitted he had yet to receive all of the alleged evidence unearthed in stories by the New York Times and CNN – reports based on anonymous sources within the intelligence community that claimed members of Trump’s campaign had “repeated” or “constant” contact with Russian intelligence officials a year ago. Still, he said he was confident the American intelligence and investigative agencies have shared the “highlights” of their investigations.

However, Russia has been very good at manipulating elections and the press, said Nunes, and there does need to be scrutiny put on the Kremlin. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I don’t have that.

“As of right now, we have no evidence”, said Nunes, of reports that that three individuals had contacts with Russian agents.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer personally picked up the phone and connected outside officials with reporters to try to discredit a New York Times article about Trump campaign aides’ contact with Russian Federation, then remained on the line for the brief conversations. The only investigation Nunes wants is of those who may have leaked information to the media showing that Trump’s team was cavorting with Russian spies.

“Here at the committee we still don’t have any evidence of them talking to Russians”, the Republican chair, Devin Nunes, told journalists.

But leaks have been a major part of American history, starting with Benjamin Franklin passing letters from the colonial governor of MA to revolutionaries and including the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon.

Despite Nunes’ downplaying of the issue, the repeated contacts between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak caused Flynn to resign from his position after less than a month on the job. Trump immediately dismissed the Times report as “fake news” during a complete clusterf*ck of his first presidential press conference.

“I don’t know that that’s what was said, but if that was said, I don’t know what the problem would be with that”, Nunes said.