Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said President Trump is “acting like someone who’s compromised” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[Related: Chuck Schumer asks what ‘damaging information’ does Putin hold over Trump]
During a panel on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, host George Stephanopoulos asked about the California Democrat’s “tough words” for Trump last week after the president met with Putin in Helsinki. That was a reference to a Yahoo News interview Schiff did, in which he said Trump was the “gravest threat to American democracy” and argued that Trump showed that he was “prepared to essentially betray the national security interests of the United States.”
“Well I certainly think he’s acting like someone who’s compromised, and it may very well be that he is compromised or it may very well be that he believes that he’s compromised, that the Russians have information on him,” Schiff said Sunday.
“We were not permitted to look into one of the allegations that was most serious to me, and that is: Were the Russians laundering money through the Trump organization? The Republicans wouldn’t allow us to go near that,” Schiff added. “I hope that special counsel Bob Mueller’s investigating it, because again, if that’s the leverage the Russians are using, it would not only explain the president’s behavior, but it would help protect the country by knowing that in fact our president was compromised.”
The Trump dossier, compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, suggested Moscow had leverage over Trump. However, many of the allegations listed in that research document remain unverified and Republicans have been in a uproar over the revelation that the FBI leaned on it to obtain the authority to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Trump was widely criticized for meeting with Putin in private for two hours on Monday and for comments he made during a follow-up joint press conference in which he cast aside U.S. intelligence and said he had no reason to not believe Putin when he said the Russian government was not involved in interference in the U.S.’s 2016 election.
Amid backlash, Trump later walked back those comments, saying he holds Putin “responsible” for meddling in the U.S. electoral process.
