Story highlights Attorney General Jeff Sessions would need to recuse himself, Issa said

GOP Intelligence committee leaders reached out to media to dispute stories of Trump campaign contact with Russian officials

(CNN) A Republican lawmaker who supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election said a special prosecutor should investigate reported communications between the Trump campaign and Russians known to US intelligence, not Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

"You are right that you cannot have somebody, a friend of mine -- Jeff Sessions -- who was on the campaign and who was an appointee," California Rep. Darrell Issa said Friday on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher." "You're going to need to use the special prosecutor's statute and office ... not just to recuse. You can't just give it to your deputy. That's a political appointee."

Issa said an investigation might not reveal any fault on the part of Trump's associates, but a special prosecutor is needed given the growing awareness of the dangers posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We're going to have to do it," he told Maher. "There may or may not be fault, but the American people ... are beginning to understand that Putin murders his enemies."

"We're going to ask the Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate to investigate within the special areas that they oversee," added Issa, who sits on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees.

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