House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Sunday said he doesn’t think his decision to restart and expand the Russian-meddling investigation conflicts with special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe.
“We have a separate and an independent and important responsibility and that is to tell the country what happened. Mueller, ultimately, his job is to determine who broke the law, and who should go to jail,” Mr. Schiff told NBC’s Meet the Press.
The California Democrat also said Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general, William Barr, hasn’t given enough assurance that Mr. Mueller’s evidence of potential wrongdoing will be disclosed to the public.
“So we need to find it ourselves,” he said.
Mr. Schiff says Republicans who controlled the last Congress led a toothless investigation into the 2016 race and what role, if any, the Trump campaign played in Russian involvement.
He announced a new investigation last week that will relaunch the probe, yet also look into whether or not the president, his children, or any of his businesses were compromised by foreign agents.
“What we are interested in is: Does the president have business dealings with Russia such that it compromises the United States?” he said.
President Trump is furious. He says he’s already been exonerated and that Democratic probes amount to presidential harassment.
“So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so,” he tweeted.
Mr. Schiff said given Mr. Trump’s vast holdings and behavior toward Russia, it’s a legitimate line of inquiry.
He pointed to reports that Mr. Trump was still pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow during the campaign.
“As a presidential candidate, while he was telling the country he had no business dealings with Russia, he was pursuing the most lucrative deal, I think, of his life and seeking the Kremlin’s help to make it happen,” Mr. Schiff said. “That’s a different form of collusion, but it is equally compromising to the country because it means the president of the United States is looking out for his bank account and not for the United States of America.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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