Wanted: a real investigation
The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia looks so divided as to be unable to prove anything — apart from the glaring need for another investigator.
The past week showed that the tradition of bipartisanship on national security matters, which has often guided the committee, has all but died. The gravity of the prospect of collusion between a foreign power and a presidential campaign, and the House’s apparent inability to examine it credibly, justify an independent, 9/11 Commission-style body whose findings can be trusted.
Its first public hearing on the Russia question this week showed that the Intelligence Committee is actually two committees — one of Democrats on the brink of declaring Trump the Manchurian (or Muscovite) candidate, the other of Republicans preoccupied with a messenger-shooting leak hunt.
The factions are led by a California odd couple, Democrat Adam Schiff, a former federal prosecutor representing the Los Angeles area, and Republican Devin Nunes, a San Joaquin Valley dairy farmer. While Schiff has taken a prosecutorial but restrained approach, Nunes this week fell off the tightrope he had walked between responsible oversight and partisan interference.
The chairman broke committee protocol and any pretense of objectivity by unilaterally telling reporters and the White House that U.S. spies may have incidentally captured conversations involving Trump’s associates. That gave the president threadbare cover for his accusation that former President Barack Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped — a claim that Nunes himself, along with a parade of top security officials, had dismissed.
“It’s hard to say that anyone can have full confidence (in Nunes) after the events of this week,” Schiff, the Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, told The Chronicle’s editorial board Friday. “You don’t take information to the White House instead of your own committee if it purports to shed light on one of the things we’re investigating.”
While Schiff said he is determined to press on with the probe, he also called for an independent investigation. So did Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., telling MSNBC, “No longer does Congress have the credibility to handle this alone.”
Schiff spoke to the seriousness of the matter Friday, noting, “Russia does not have our interests at heart. They are trying to tear down not only our own democracy but democracies around the world.” Could any campaign for the nation’s highest office have been so cynical as to cooperate with that project? The American people need to know.