Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Sunday said it was too soon to address whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions should appoint a special prosecutor to look into alleged contacts between President Trump’s campaign team and Russian officials during the election.
“I think that’s way, way getting ahead of ourselves here, Chuck. There’s no allegations of any crime occurring and there’s not even indication that there’s criminal investigations underway by the FBI — as opposed to counter-intelligence investigations, which the FBI conducts all the time as our main intelligence bureau,” Cotton told NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd. “If we get down the road that’s a decision that Attorney General Sessions can make at the time.”
The first-term senator said bipartisan congressional investigations on the charges will be objective.
“I think there is no doubt this will be a fair inquiry. We are well underway and it’s been conducted in a bipartisan fashion and Democrats and Republicans have been working well on it and there is a limit to what we can discuss publicly and the eight Democrats know what we learned and I would encourage them to tell the other 40 Democrats in the Senate what they may and may not want to be saying so they don’t get over their skis making false allegations or exaggerated allegations.”
Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the former House Oversight chairman, said he was open to the idea of having a special prosecutor look into the issue because of Sessions’ friendship with Trump during his entire campaign.
Todd asked Cotton what it would take for him to decide a special prosecutor was necessary. Todd rehashed Cotton’s calls for a special prosecutor for the IRS during his campaign against former Sen. Mike Pryor.
“I think that’s far down the road from what our inquiry might reveal in the intelligence committee or what the FBI’s inquiries might reveal,” said Cotton. “Right now there’s no credible evidence of these contacts, beyond anonymous sources in the media.”
