Trump ally steps aside over Russia probe

THE Republican leader of the House investigation into Russian interference in the US election stepped aside yesterday after being criticised for compromising the probe in visits to the White House.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes had sought to turn the investigation away from Russia and towards President Donald Trump’s allegations that the previous Obama administration had abused its powers by spying on Trump and his advisers.

Rancour over this, and over Nunes’s sharing top-secret intelligence reports with Trump but not members of his own committee, had driven the committee’s probe to a halt.

The committee was originally tasked with examining how Russia interfered in last year’s presidential campaign and whether any Trump aides or associates collaborated with Moscow.

Democrats accused Nunes of seeking to protect Trump by focusing on allegations of abuse by former president Barack Obama’s staff.

Nunes said he was temporarily stepping aside from the probe to answer allegations made to Congress’s ethics body by Democratic groups that he had revealed classified information to the public.

“The charges are entirely false and politically motivated, and are being levelled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of US citizens and other abuses of power,” he said.

Adam Schiff, the Democratic vicechairman of the committee, said Nunes’s move would allow the Russia probe to get fully back on track.

“The important work of investigating the Russian involvement in our election never subsided, but we have a fresh opportunity to move forward in the unified and nonpartisan way that an investigation of this seriousness demands,” he said.

Nunes’s move ends weeks of very public tensions between himself and Schiff that had drawn criticism from all quarters of Congress.

The House panel is one of several bodies examining the Russia scandal.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating the issue since June, when it became clear to US intelligence that the Russian government was behind hacks of Democratic Party communications and a misinformation campaign that targeted Trump rival Hillary Clinton.

In January, US intelligence chiefs said they had concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had masterminded the effort to damage Clinton. In Congress, the House and Senate intelligence committees have been leading separate probes, and the fight between Nunes and Schiff had raised concerns that the House investigation would be subsumed by politics.

Nunes further raised doubts after he went to the White House on March 21 to view top-secret files he said indicated abuse of intelligence by the Obama administration.

The files were intelligence intercepts of the communications of foreign officials, which were either with US officials or mentioned their names.

Under US privacy laws, the names of Americans in such intercept files have to be masked, but Nunes said he had discovered files where the names had been unmasked.

Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice added fuel to the fire when she acknowledged she had done some of the unmasking.