Trump controversies rattling party
UNITED STATES: Congressional Republicans yesterday showed growing concern over the controversies enveloping the Trump administration, with a key House committee asking the FBI for records of communications between President Donald Trump and the agency’s former director James Comey.
This followed reports that Trump sought to shut down a federal investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the oversight and government reform committee, requested that the documentation be delivered by May 24.
This came in response to media reports disclosing the existence of a memo written by Comey, who Trump fired last week, alleging that Trump asked him in February to end the Flynn investigation.
Chaffetz, in a letter to FBI acting director Andrew Mccabe, cited a report from the New York Times stating that Comey’s memo ‘‘describes a conversation in which the president referenced the FBI investigation . . . and said to Comey, ‘I hope you can let this go’.’’
Chaffetz asked the FBI to provide ‘‘all memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings’’ related to Comey’s communication with Trump.
House Speaker Paul Ryan directed the oversight committee to track down the Comey memo.
The pressure on congressional Republicans to step up their oversight of the Trump administration intensified this week when The Washington Post reported that the president shared classified information related to Islamic State with Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting last week.
The White House yesteday sought to tamp down the controversy, with national security adviser H R Mcmaster saying that what the president shared with the Russian officials ‘‘was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged’’.
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans called on Trump to provide a transcript of the meeting to the congressional intelligence committees.
Nearly 24 hours after news of Trump’s disclosure to the Russians broke, none of the leaders of the Senate or House intelligence committees had spoken to White House officials who were in the Oval Office and could say what happened.
‘‘We’d like to understand what was said,’’ Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr told reporters yesterday. When it comes to Trump’s ability to handle classified information, ‘‘that will either confirm our confidence or possibly shake our confidence’’, the Republican senator said.
Following news of Comey’s memo, Democrats railed against Trump with charges that some had previously shied away from using, including obstruction of justice, an impeachable offence.
‘‘If these reports are true, the president’s brazen attempt to shut down the FBI’S investigation of Michael Flynn is an assault on the rule of law that is fundamental to our democracy,’’ House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said.
Trump tried to explain away the situation in a series of tweets yesterday, writing that he had the ‘‘absolute right’’ to share ‘‘facts pertaining to terrorism’’ with the Russian officials.
Later, Mcmaster defended Trump’s conversations as ‘‘wholly appropriate’’ but declined to discuss whether the information shared by the president was classified. – Washington Post