The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat said it is too early to say whether anyone on President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.
“We haven’t obtained any of the information yet,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. “We are in the very infancy of this investigation,” he said, adding that “prejudging” what his panel might discover in the course of a nascent probe into potential contacts between the Trump administration and Moscow is unhelpful.
“We’re not in a position to reach any conclusions” yet, Schiff said.
Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told reporters earlier Monday: “There’s nothing there,” regarding improper communication between any Trump advisers and Russian officials.
Schiff sees three major obstacles to getting to the bottom of the Russian issue: keeping the inquiry bipartisan; receiving full cooperation from the FBI; and adequate staffing to conduct a thorough review.
Schiff said he and Nunes are committed to a bipartisan probe and, going forward, will conduct joint media briefings about the case’s status.
“I don’t have the assurances that I would like from the bureau,” Schiff said about whether he’s confident that FBI officials will be totally forthcoming.
Usually, FBI officials don’t discuss ongoing or closed investigations, but in the matter of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address and server during her tenure as secretary of state they “violated in the extreme” that policy, Schiff charged.
He also labeled any attempts by Trump officials to enlist the intelligence community’s help in tamping down reports about potential contacts “completely inappropriate.”
Such contact “threatens” the independence of the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies, Schiff said.
He said the committee will also examine leaks from intelligence officials to reporters—the aspect of the Flynn matter Nunes is most interested in.
Schiff said the committee will delve into the “raw intelligence” that went into the intelligence community’s report concluding that Russia hacked Democratic Party officials’ emails and tried to help Trump win the presidency.
To maximize committee resources, Schiff suggested working with the panel’s Senate counterpart—an option that senators have not rebuffed but “neither have they welcomed the idea,” Schiff said.
“Congress cannot afford to wait,” for the FBI to complete its investigation of potentially inappropriate contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russia before delving into the matter itself, he said.
