Lawmakers ramp up Russia investigations in wake of Comey testimony

Erin Kelly | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Spicer downplays lawsuits, Sessions testimony Reacting to news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants his testimony before the Senate intelligence committee to be open, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the president wants 'this to get investigated as soon as possible.' (June 12)

WASHINGTON — Fired FBI director James Comey's dramatic testimony last week has ramped up congressional investigations of Russia's interference in the U.S. election as House and Senate committees look at issuing more subpoenas for key witnesses and expanding the scope of their probes.

"This is nowhere near the end of our investigation," Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., declared immediately after Comey's testimony before the panel last Thursday.

The most immediate evidence of that is the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify in public Tuesday before the same senators.

Sessions, who had originally planned to testify in closed session, will face questions about his role in President Trump's decision to fire Comey last month and about his own meetings with Russian officials while he was serving as Trump's campaign adviser. Comey told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee during a closed session Thursday that Sessions may have had a third, previously unreported, meeting with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S., according to a Senate aide who was not authorized to disclose the information.

Beyond Tuesday's hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a member of the Intelligence Committee, is calling on the Judiciary panel to expand its probe to investigate all matters related to possible obstruction of justice.

Comey testified that he could not say whether Trump engaged in obstruction of justice when he asked Comey to end the FBI's investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who was fired for lying about his contacts with Russian officials. Comey said he believes Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who has been appointed special counsel to lead the FBI's Russia investigation, will look into any possible obstruction.

"It is my strong recommendation that the Judiciary Committee investigate all issues that raise a question of obstruction of justice," Feinstein wrote in a recent letter to Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "These issues should be developed by our legal staff, presented to us, and be subject to full Committee hearings."

Feinsein also asked Grassley to consider issuing subpoenas to compel testimony from Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers about whether Trump asked them to downplay possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials in last year's election. Coats and Rogers refused to discuss their conversations with the president at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, but they said they did not feel "pressured" to interfere or intervene in the Russia investigation.

Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy said Monday that "no specific decisions on issuing subpoenas have been made at this time." But he also said Grassley and Feinstein are working toward an agreement on which types of subpoenas — for documents, public testimony or private testimony — they might issue and in what order.

"That all depends on the course of the investigation," Foy said.

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On Friday, Grassley and Feinstein and two other members of the panel sent a letter to Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman asking him to provide any memos that Comey shared with him to be leaked to the media.

Comey testified Thursday that he gave memos of his conversations with Trump to a professor friend at Columbia to leak to reporters in hopes that it would spur the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel in the Russia investigation. Comey accomplished that goal last month when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller.

Grassley and Feinstein also are considering issuing a subpoena to Comey to testify before their committee, which oversees the FBI. Comey declined an earlier invitation to appear voluntarily before the panel.

While the most recent news has focused on Comey and Sessions, investigators in both the Senate and House also want to hear from Flynn and from Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser. Kushner became a focus for lawmakers after reports that he asked Russian officials last December to set up a back-channel line of communications between the incoming Trump administration and Russia.

Kushner has said he is willing to talk to congressional investigators and is expected to meet this month with staffers from the Senate Intelligence Committee. The panel received about 600 pages of documents from Flynn last week in response to subpoenas that senators sent to Flynn's businesses.

There are four congressional committees that are continuing to conduct Russia probes. In addition to the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees, the House Intelligence Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are investigating.

The House Intelligence Committee announced Friday that it sent letters to Comey to provide any notes or memos that he may still have detailing conversations he had with Trump. The panel also is asking White House counsel Don McGahn to provide any tapes of Comey's conversations with Trump by June 23. Trump has hinted that there may be tapes, but the White House has declined to say whether they exist.

The House panel also plans to ask former Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson to testify about Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential race.

Other witnesses that congressional investigators want to hear from include former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Congress still has a long way to go to get answers to its most crucial questions.

"We still don't have an answer to the basic question of whether or not members of President Trump's campaign staff collaborated with the Russians," she said in a recent interview on MSNBC's Meet the Press Daily. "It is pretty clear that the Russians tried to influence the election ... What is not clear, and what we don't know the answer to, is the very important question of whether or not any members of President Trump's campaign were involved in that effort."