House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi labeled congressional Republicans as “accomplices” to President-elect Trump given his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and after the Senate Select Intelligence Committee announced that it will not investigate any ties the Trump campaign may have had with the Russians.
Sen. Richard Burr, who chairs the select committee, revealed Thursday that they will not look into the ties because they “don’t have anything to do with political campaigns,” which Pelosi railed against while meeting with the reporters in the Capitol on Friday.
“Leader [Mitch] McConnell is saying the [Senate] Intelligence Committee can do that. Meanwhile, the GOP chair of the Senate Intel Committee, Sen. Burr, announced he will not investigate Russia and the campaign in the U.S.,” she said. “That makes Republicans accomplices in my view of President-elect Trump’s praise of Putin.”
Pelosi continued to echo Democratic calls for a special investigation into the attempted Russian hacking into the election. The comments came after members of Congress took part in a classified briefing on Russia, which Pelosi declined to elaborate on. She also declined to say if FBI Director James Comey indicated that the FBI is looking into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia.
“You know I can’t talk about what happened in the meeting,” Pelosi said. “I can just say publicly that the American people are owed the truth, and there is a great deal of evidence to say that this is an issue of high interest to the American people, to the strength, the integrity of our own democracy.”
“For that reason, the FBI should let us know if they’re doing that investigation or not,” Pelosi continued. “They’re usually inscrutable, as you saw in the public testimony in the Senate.”
Burr said it would be the FBI’s job to investigate any ties between the campaign and Moscow.
