Five Revelations from the Senate's First Russia Hearings
As the smoldering wreckage of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russia’s election meddling continued to flare up Thursday, a new investigation, this time in the Senate, was just getting underway.
To review: Last week, House intelligence committee chair Devin Nunes met in secret with an unnamed intelligence source on the White House grounds. The next day, he held an impromptu press conference during which he informed reporters that communications from members of Trump's transition team had been swept up during legal surveillance of a foreign national. Nunes left the press conference to share the information, which he had not shared with his co-chair, Adam Schiff, with Trump, on the advice of Speaker Paul Ryan.
Two days later, Nunes abruptly cancelled the testimonies of former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, all three of whom were scheduled to appear before the committee on Tuesday. Any appearance of Nunes' impartiality was thus hopelessly compromised, but he refuses to recuse himself, so the responsibility for conducting a credible investigation has fallen squarely in the laps of Senate intelligence committee co-chairs Mark Warner (D-VA) and Richard Burr (R-NC).
"The vice chairman and I realize that if we politicize this process, our efforts will likely fail," Burr said at the start of Thursday's hearings. "The public deserves to hear the truth about possible Russian involvement in our elections, how they came to be involved, how we may have failed to prevent that involvement, what actions were taken in response, if any, and what we plan to do to ensure the integrity of future free elections at the heart of our democracy."
Despite their best efforts, Thursday's hearings were dogged by ongoing fallout from the House investigation. During the break between the committee's morning and afternoon sessions, news broke that Nunes' sources for the surveillance claim were two White House officials (something he'd previously denied) — one whom Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security advisor who replaced Michael Flynn, had previously tried to fire before Trump blocked the dismissal; the other a White House lawyer who previously worked for Nunes.
As if that weren't enough, that evening the reports emerged that Flynn, who recently retained a (seemingly) staunchly anti-Trump lawyer, has offered to testify in front of Congress, if he is given immunity. (Flashback to September, when Flynn, speaking then about Hillary Clinton, told Meet the Press, “When you are given immunity that means that you've probably committed a crime."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/five-revelations-from-the-senates-first-russia-hearings-w474260?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=033117_15