During an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said allowing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to lead an investigation would be inappropriate given Sessions’s status as a Trump campaign adviser and Cabinet member.

“You’re right, you cannot have somebody, a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions, who was on the campaign and who was an appointee,” Issa said. “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute and office.”

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This comment made Issa one of the few Republican representatives to publicly voice support for an independent investigation. Calls for a special prosecutor have come mostly from Democrats.

On Sunday, White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the congressional committees probing Russia’s actions should be allowed to do their work first. Sanders also said the notion that Russia interfered in the election was being pushed by Democrats still upset by the election result.

“If Democrats want to continue to relive their loss every single day, by doing an investigation or review after review, that’s fine by us,” she told ABC News’s “This Week.” “We know why we won this race. It’s because we had the better candidate with the better message.”

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President Trump repeated this argument later in the day on Twitter:

WHITE HOUSE ASKED INTEL OFFICIALS TO COUNTER RUSSIA STORIES

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The Washington Post learned that the White House enlisted senior members of the intelligence community in an effort to counter news stories about ties between Trump associates and Russia.

Intelligence officials recently made calls to news organizations at the behest of the White House to contest reporting on Russia, our colleagues reported. The calls came after the White House was unsuccessful in convincing senior FBI officials to do the same.

The effort also involved senior lawmakers, including the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees.

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As The Post reported, the decision to involve intelligence officials “could be perceived as threatening the independence of U.S. spy agencies that are supposed to remain insulated from partisan issues,” while involving lawmakers might undercut the credibility of ongoing congressional probes.

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CNN, NEW YORK TIMES AMONG THOSE BARRED FROM BRIEFING

In a rare and surprising move, the White House on Friday blocked a number of major news organizations — CNN, the New York Times, Politico, the Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed — from attending an informal briefing with press secretary Sean Spicer. Access was given to other reporters, including some representing conservative outlets friendly to Trump’s administration.

The move, which again ratcheted up tensions between the press and the Trump administration, drew criticism from media leaders as a betrayal of democratic values.

“The action harks back to the darkest chapters of U.S. history and reeks of undemocratic, un-American and unconstitutional censorship,” said National Press Club President Jeffrey Ballou.