Democratic senators charged Tuesday that the only explanation for President Trump’s weak performance in front of Russian President Vladimir Putin is that Russia has compromising information on him, a charge that Republicans doubted even if they couldn’t disprove it.
The question of “kompromat” came up as soon as Trump indicated in a press briefing after his summit with Putin that he doubted his own intelligence agencies that say Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Trump corrected the record on Tuesday by saying he misspoke and that he backs his agencies’ assessment, but Democrats were already speculating openly that Putin must have something on Trump.
“The president’s behavior has left everyone in the United States scratching their heads. His behavior was so bizarre, so weak, so deleterious to American interests and our national security that millions of Americans are left wondering if Putin indeed has something on the president,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday. “That is the most logical explanation of the president’s behavior.”
In light of these doubts, Schumer demanded that Trump’s team testify in Congress about Trump’s private meeting with Putin. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already slated to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Wednesday, but Schumer also wants to hear from Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who Schumer said he spoke with Monday night, among others.
[Trump: If Russia had dirt on me, ‘It would be out’]
Senate Democrats also want all notes from the meeting. Schumer and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a Foreign Relations Committee member, called for the translator during the meeting between the one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin, particularly to find out if Trump made any stealth agreements with the Russians.
“We have a right to know what happened in that room. The American people have a right to know what happened in that room,” she said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., kept up her questions Tuesday wondering what kompromat the Russians have on the president. The House Democratic leader has made those calls for over a year, and has reiterated the questions throughout the past 48 hours.
“His eagerness to sell out America proves that Russians must have something personally, politically or financially on President Trump,” Pelosi said Tuesday at a press conference.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was critical of some of Trump’s answers during the press conference, in particular his apparent hesitation in backing U.S. intelligence reports about Russian election interference.
Lankford called Trump’s comments “a little jarring.” However, the Oklahoma Republican does not buy into the theory that the Russians have damaging information on the president.
“I don’t think Putin has something on him, but I don’t know why he has been so hesitant,” Lankford said, adding he hopes Trump “gets a mulligan” on the comment.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., another member of the intelligence panel, also refutes the belief that Trump is compromised by damaging information possessed by Putin, a former KGB agent.
“There is no evidence of that, or any kind of collusion,” Blunt said.
Like other Republicans, Blunt believes Trump’s refusal to embrace the evidence of Russian collusion is related to the investigation into whether Trump played any role in working with the Russians in 2016 to defeat Hillary Clinton.
“I think the president has a hard time separating in his mind the idea that the Russians could have interfered, from the idea that somehow he was complicit in that,” Blunt said. “There is no reason to believe that.”
Susan Ferrechio contributed to this report.
