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The Senate's Russia Probe Is Facing a Reckoning
Meanwhile, the Democratic-led House committee is gearing up for a reinvigorated inquiry.
NATASHA BERTRAND
7:40 PM ET
About two years ago, Republican congressman Devin Nunes, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went on a “midnight run” to the White House that changed everything.
Nunes embarked on the late-night excursion just as the panel he oversaw was opening an investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. He then used the information he'd obtained from White House sources to allege surveillance abuses by President Barack Obama’s administration, raising critics’ concerns that his chumminess with the administration delegitimized the House’s Trump/Russia probe. It was also a sign, critics said, that the committee couldn’t operate in a bipartisan way.
. . .
Nevertheless, the bipartisan ground on which the Senate purported to have built its inquiry may be cracking. On Tuesday, Warner said he disagreed with Burr’s claim that the probe had found no “direct evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The comment left some legal experts perplexed, too: “I don’t think I’ve ever had a case where I have direct evidence of a conspiracy,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a Justice Department veteran who served as former FBI Director James Comey’s chief of staff until 2015. “If there is snow on your front lawn, you can safely conclude that it snowed,’ Rosenberg told me. “Is that direct evidence? No. It’s circumstantial—someone could’ve driven up to your house and thrown snow on your lawn. But that’s unlikely. The law treats circumstantial and direct evidence of being of equal weight.”
Some Democratic aides were also confused at Burr’s recent claim that a key witness in the probe, former British spy Christopher Steele, had not responded to the committee’s attempts to engage with him. In fact, Steele submitted written answers to the panel last August, two people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the investigation told The Atlantic.
More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/russia-investigation-senate-probe-faces-critical-point/582883/