A House investigation that includes the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russian intelligence officials is ongoing, but preliminary inquiries on the matter have not returned incriminating evidence, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Monday.
The House and Senate Intelligence panels have folded a probe of those contacts into a broader investigation of illicit Russian activities, like political interference during the 2016 presidential election.Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes told reporters that his committee is set to receive evidence as part of its investigation, but that his initial inquiries have not brought back information implicating Trump associates.
“We have the scoping of our investigation finished, and then we’re going to move into actually receiving the evidence,” Nunes said. “But as of right now, the initial inquiries I’ve made to the appropriate agencies, I don’t have any evidence.”
“That doesn’t mean [the phone calls] don’t exist,” he said. “But I don’t have that, and what I’ve been told is, by many folks, is that there’s nothing there.”
Nunes said he had not seen evidence of repeated contact outside of former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador during the Trump transition phase. Flynn resigned this month after admitting he had misled the vice president about those communications.
“There is no evidence that I’ve been presented of regular contact with anybody within the Trump campaign,” he said. “The only one that’s obvious is General Flynn’s discussions with the Russians, which I would still contend that he was doing what he was supposed to do, which is prepare the president-elect for office by getting as many leaders in front of him as possible.”
The House investigation into Russia has been under way for some time, he said, and extends beyond Trump officials.
“We’ve had a long, ongoing investigation into Russian activities,” he said. “Since the election, we’ve broadened the scope of that investigation to include any involvement in our elections here, and of course any ties that there might be to any government officials at any level, so it’s not just here in Washington, but governors and others.”
The White House has repeatedly denied a New York Times report that members of Trump’s team, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, engaged in contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the presidential campaign.
“The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said last Sunday. “The top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.”
Priebus and White House spokesman Sean Spicer reportedly reached out to senior intelligence officials and members of Congress, including Nunes, to set the record straight to reporters.
The intelligence chairman said Monday that he did not see those moves as inappropriate.
“Here you have the White House actually trying to communicate with many of you and trying to communicate with the Congress about what they’re doing, and now suddenly that’s wrong,” Nunes said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Nunes cautioned Monday and over the weekend against hastily basing an investigation on the Times story.
“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” he told reporters Saturday. “We can’t go on a witch hunt against the American people, any American people who have not had any contact, just because they appeared in a news story.”
