Russia scandal creeps on: White House is badly compromised after Comey's testimony
MONDAY, MAR 20, 2017 03:55 PM EDT
FBI Director James Comey confirms that Trump's campaign is under investigation as the White House flails and spins
SIMON MALOY
The big news out of Monday’s hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was that FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the Justice Department is actively investigating connections between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. As Comey put it in his prepared remarks, the bureau is looking into “whether there was any coordination between the [Trump] campaign and Russia’s efforts” to interfere in the 2016 election.
The other news to emerge from the House committee’s hearing is that President Trump’s allegation that former president Barack Obama “wiretapped” Trump Tower has now been refuted by pretty much every agency and entity that can possibly refute it. Comey testified that the Department of Justice had not found any evidence to support Trump’s claim, which comports with what the House and Senate intelligence committees have determined. No one can seem to unearth any proof for the president’s accusation.
On top of that, National Security Agency director Admiral Mike Rogers flatly rejected the idea that Obama had outsourced surveillance of Trump Tower to a British intelligence agency (an accusation that White House press secretary Sean Spicer referenced during one of his press briefings). Asked by committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whether he agreed with comments from British officials describing that allegation as “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous,” Rogers replied: “Yes, sir.”
The immediate takeaway from all of this is that the White House is badly compromised politically, and administration officials know it. Spicer, appearing before reporters as the HPSCI hearing was still taking place, struggled to downplay the more damning aspects of Comey’s testimony. Pressed on which Trump associates the FBI’s investigation could be targeting, Spicer tried to argue that Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn barely played any role in getting Trump elected. The record indicates otherwise: Manafort served as Trump campaign chairman until he was forced out amid growing controversy surrounding his financial links to Russia, and Flynn was a key campaign adviser who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser — until he was forced out for lying about his contacts with Russia.
Flynn “was a volunteer of the campaign,” Spicer insisted, and Manafort “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.” Even for a White House that is known for flamboyant dishonesty, those are egregious lies, and they show that the people around Trump understand how bad this investigation looks.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/20/russia-scandal-creeps-on-white-house-is-badly-compromised-after-comeys-testimony/
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