Trump faces probe

House committee to investigate Russia connection claims

A US House of Representatives committee will look into a newspaper report that the FBI investigated whether President Donald Trump has been working on behalf of Russia, against US interests.

The New York Times reported that the probe began in the days after Trump fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May 2017 and said the agency’s counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether Trump’s actions constituted a possible threat to national security.

The White House late on Friday rejected the Times article as “absurd”.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said his panel “will take steps to better understand both the President’s actions and the FBI’S response to that behaviour” in coming weeks.

He also said lawmakers would seek to protect investigators from the President’s “increasingly unhinged attacks”.

“There is no reason to doubt the seriousness or professionalism of the FBI, as the President did in reaction to this story,” Nadler, a New York Democrat, said in a statement.

“We have learned from this reporting that, even in the earliest days of the Trump administration, the President’s behaviour was so erratic and so concerning that the FBI felt compelled to do the unprecedented – open a counterintelligence investigation into a sitting president,” Nadler said.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff said his committee would press ahead with its probe of Trump’s contacts with Russia.

Trump responded on Saturday by lashing out on Twitter.

“Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey,” Trump tweeted.