The committee probing the Russia scandal has erupted into open warfare
By Paul Waldman March 24 at 1:39 PM
There’s a war breaking out in the House Intelligence Committee over the unfolding Russia scandal. And in a weird way, the evident desire of the chairman of that committee to protect President Trump may only be increasing Trump’s problems.
Today brought some new developments in the saga when Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes and ranking Democrat Adam Schiff held dueling news conferences. Nunes took what appear to be new steps to shield the committee’s investigation — into Russian meddling and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign — from public view, and Schiff issued some scalding criticism of Nunes that has really pushed hostilities to a higher level.
-snip-
Which brings us to today’s developments. First, Nunes announced that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has agreed to testify before the committee. Given Manafort’s business relationships with pro-Russian strongmen and oligarchs, and the report that he was paid $10 million a year (apparently to advance the political interests of Vladimir Putin’s regime), that could be some interesting testimony indeed (though unfortunately, it will probably take place behind closed doors).
But that’s not all. Nunes also announced he was canceling a hearing scheduled for Monday that was to include three former Obama administration officials: director of national intelligence James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and Sally Yates (whom Trump fired as acting attorney general). Nunes said their public hearing was canceled so that the committee could have a closed hearing with FBI director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers, who have already testified in an open hearing.
But Schiff wasn’t having it. “We don’t welcome cutting off public access to information,” Schiff said at his own press conference. “I think that there must have been a very strong pushback from the White House about the nature of Monday’s hearing.” Nunes also did apologize to the rest of the committee for going behind their backs to brief the president, but Schiff said: “I’m deeply discouraged by this week’s events.”
It’s clear that this committee, which is ordinarily among the most nonpartisan of all congressional committees, is now at war with itself. We could see something resembling what happened with the House Oversight Committee during the Obama years: Darrell Issa and Elijah Cummings regularly shouting at each other in public; a lot of tense hearings and mutual distrust; and competing leaks to the media.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/03/24/the-committee-probing-the-russia-scandal-has-erupted-into-open-warfare/?utm_term=.12a1e78c6502&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
= new reply since forum marked as read
