Senate should take lead on Russia investigation, GOP lawmaker says

WASHINGTON – A Republican congressman said Wednesday that the Senate should take the lead on Congress’s Russia investigation, after the House Intelligence Committee’s probe all but ground to a halt this week over bitter political infighting.

“The House is paralyzed on this thing,” Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., said in an interview. “The Senate is moving forward. I think that’s the only committee that’s going to be able to bring us a report at this point.”

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee are expected to brief the press on Wednesday afternoon about the status of their investigation

Dent is one of the first Republican voices to openly advocate moving the Russia investigation out of the House Intelligence Committee’s hands. Last week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said “no longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone,” calling for a select committee or independent commission to take over the investigation.

“The bottom line is, it seems like the Senate is moving in a good way,” Dent said. “They have a much greater likelihood of providing a report that the House does at this point.”

Both Dent’s and McCain’s defections from their party followed the actions of the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who last week surprised his colleagues by announcing that President Donald Trump and members of his transition team’s identities may have been revealed in surveillance reports directed at foreign targets.

Nunes briefed the president and the press on the matter before going to the committee – a move that angered Democrats, who have accused Nunes of improperly working on Trump’s behalf while also leading the House investigation.

Nunes also raised questions among his colleagues by, according to his own account, learning of the information from a source he had met on White House grounds. Nunes has declined to reveal the source.

Democrats have called on Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation.

Last week Nunes also cancelled a public hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, that would have featured testimony from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, whom Trump fired in January after she refused to enforce his first immigration order. The Washington Post reported this week that the Trump administration sought to prevent Yates from testifying.

The administration has denied they sought to muzzle Yates. Nunes has said he cancelled the hearing “in order to make time available” for FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers to return to the committee to answer questions privately – questions that Nunes said had arisen after their open testimony before the committee last Monday.

That closed-door briefing has not yet been scheduled. And now Yates’s testimony – and that of everyone else the House Intelligence Committee was planning to interview in the weeks ahead – is on indefinite hold, after Nunes told reporters Tuesday that he would not be scheduling any additional interviews or depositions until after the committee meets with Comey and Rogers.

“Until Comey comes forward, it’s hard for us to move forward with interviews and depositions,” Nunes said.

Several Democrats said Tuesday that Nunes had also cancelled regular meetings the House Intelligence Committee holds twice a week in order to discuss topics not limited to Russia or surveillance. A spokesman for Nunes pushed back against that assertion, saying this week’s meetings were never actually scheduled and will resume next week.