BLACKSTONE, Va. — There’s another topic besides Obamacare animating town halls across the country this week: Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.

Constituents and liberal activists are demanding to know what GOP lawmakers are doing to help or hinder investigations into the president’s ties to Moscow and Russian interference in the 2016 election. The scrutiny suggests the firestorm over alleged ties between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration has spread well beyond the Beltway.


“I am very concerned about the Trump administration and his ties to Russia,” a woman told GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley in Garner, Iowa, on Tuesday — winning huge applause from the overflow crowd when she said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from any investigation.

Grassley replied that Sessions, his former Senate colleague, should listen to ethics experts, but added that if the rest of his constituents largely agreed, “I’d be happy to pass that along to the people involved.”

The attention on the issue back home could increase pressure on GOP lawmakers to pursue a serious and far-reaching probe. The controversy will also test how far Republican are willing to go in openly challenging the new president, who has consistently dismissed the matter as “fake news.”

Lawmakers on recess don’t have that luxury, after last week’s abrupt resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn over his communication with Russia’s U.S. ambassador and a steady stream of intelligence leaks that have raised questions about how much deeper Trump’s links to Russia might go.

In fact, some Republicans sought to seize on the issue as a rare opportunity to find a bit of common ground with critics, who have been haranguing them to take a tougher line against Trump and his policies.

"Our legal authorities should investigate and follow the rule of law wherever it leads," said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), earning cheers from an otherwise hostile audience in sleepy Blackstone, Virginia, on Tuesday.

The issue is far from the top priority for most town hall attendees, who have been flooding Republican events to register fury over the GOP plans to repeal and replace Obamacare. Stoked in part by the newly formed Indivisible, a liberal activist group hoping to devise a tea party-style wave of energy from the left, the protests have largely focused on the potential threat to millions of Americans’ access to health insurance.

But many people have also used the events to highlight other concerns with the Trump administration, from its flawed rollout of refugee travel restrictions to, most pointedly, growing reports that Russian officials conferred with Trump associates repeatedly during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Protesters urge Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn to support serious investigations into President Donald Trumps ties to Russia. | Paul Demko / POLITICO

Multiple committees in Congress have already launched probes into Russia’s efforts to tamper with the election, but Democrats have raised concerns that those Republican-led panels will be insufficient to investigate the president and his associates. Democrats have called for an independent commission or a bipartisan select committee — calls that have been rejected so far by GOP leaders.

When one woman asked Rep. Marsha Blackburn whether she would support an independent commission to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia, the Tennessee Republican sidestepped the exact question by noting the House and Senate intelligence committees are moving forward.

“I support them doing their work and getting to the bottom of what happened,” Blackburn said, generating rare applause from the packed crowd.

Even where lawmakers didn’t hold public events, several constituents — often egged on by liberal activists — tweeted to seek their views on Russia investigations.

Though these lawmakers generally drew applause for their calls to scrutinize Russian interferen

ce in the 2016 elections, they also set limits. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) took a question on Russia from his Mariposa crowd on Tuesday as well. But he told reporters later that he saw “nothing unusual” about Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador, which, contrary to Flynn’s initial statements, included discussion of U.S. sanctions against Russia.

And in Virginia, Brat rejected a suggestion for an independent investigation into Flynn's relationship with the Russian ambassador, which Trump has defended as above-board.

“There’s no allegation of wrongdoing with Flynn,” he said as the crowd quickly turned on him again. “You don’t get to throw spaghetti on the wall.”

Kyle Cheney reported from Blackstone, Virginia; Jennifer Haberkorn contributed reporting from Iowa Falls and Garner, Iowa; Paul Demko contributed reporting from Fairview, Tennessee; and David Siders contributed reporting from Mariposa, California.

