Democrats say they’ll step up probe after reports on Trump

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats Sunday pledged heightened scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s dealings with Russia, spurred by news reports of extraordinary secrecy surrounding his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the opening in 2017 of an FBI counter-intelligence investigation into whether Trump worked on behalf of the Kremlin.

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress and his administration defended him, impugning the motives of federal investigators, insisting the White House had been tough on Russia, and denouncing as “ludicrous” any suggestion that Trump had been compromised by Moscow.

The intensifying Russia-related furor coincides with a partial government shutdown that pushed over the weekend into a record-breaking fourth week. More than three-quarters of a million federal workers have been furloughed or are working without their salaries. They missed their first paychecks of 2019 last week.

There was little sign of any imminent breakthrough in ending the shutdown, whose effects are being more broadly felt with each passing week. Trump spent Sunday morning demanding on Twitter that Congress allocate funds for building a wall on the border with Mexico, a project Democrats vehemently oppose.

The president called into a conservative talk show on Saturday night to denounce a report in the New York Times that in 2017, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation into whether the president was acting as an agent for Russia.

Asked on Fox News whether he had ever “worked for Russia,” Trump fumed, but did not take the opportunity to directly respond to the query.

“I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked. I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written,” he said.

On Sunday news shows, several leading congressional Democrats expressed deepening concerns over Trump and Russia, after the New York Times report and a Washington Post story about Trump’s efforts to conceal what was said in meetings with Putin over the past two years.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said on “Fox News Sunday” that word of a counter-intelligence investigation was “alarming,” and that it showed the need for the wideranging Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller to proceed unimpeded.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that opening a counter-intelligence investigation a sitting president shows that the FBI must have had a “very deep level of concern.”

With a new Democratic majority in the House, freshly anointed committee chairs are pledging to use their expanded powers to look into Trump and Russia, including the ability to subpoena witnesses and sensitive documents.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who now heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said his panel would hold hearings about what he called Trump’s “bizarre relationship with Putin and his cronies.”

In a statement issued Saturday, Engel suggested that secrecy about what was said when

Trump met with the Russian leader to the extent of keeping his national security team in the dark —was of paramount concern.

“Every time Trump meets with Putin, the country is told nothing,” Engel said.

“America deserves the truth, and the Foreign Affairs Committee will seek to get to the bottom of it.”

Republican allies of the president said the acts of concealment described by the Post, including Trump’s demand that an interpreter hand over the U.S. side’s only notes of a private meeting with Putin in Hamburg, Germany, were well within his authority.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on CNN’s “State of the Union that “this is not a traditional president.”

“He has unorthodox means,” Johnson said.

“But he is president of the United States. It’s pretty much up to him in terms of who he wants to read in to his conversations with world leaders.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said Democrats had been stymied in previous efforts to learn what was said between Trump and Putin during a summit last year in Helsinki, Finland, but signalled that was about to change.

“Last year, we sought to obtain the interpreter’s notes or testimony, from the private meeting between Trump and Putin,” he said in a statement.

“The Republicans on our committee voted us down. Will they join us now?”

Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, said: “Shouldn’t we find out whether our president is really putting ’America first?’”

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, who is travelling in the Middle East, dismissed the possibility that Trump acted on Russia’s behalf, calling it an “absolutely ludicrous” notion.

“The idea that’s contained in the New York Times story, that President Trump was a threat to American national security, is silly on its face, and not worthy of a response,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”