Senate’s Russia Investigation Is Floundering Thanks To Republicans
Republicans are clearly slow-walking the Russia investigation.
Yesterday we learned that the Senate’s Russia investigation has thus far assigned no full-time staff and has now key witnesses. And today another report, this time from investigative reporter Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, details just how little progress the Senate has made.
The Senate Intel Committee’s investigation has been labeled the “grown up” investigation compared to the circus that has been taking place on the House side. However, these new reports make clear that the Senate has done almost nothing.
According to the Yahoo News report, “More than three months after the Senate Intelligence Committee launched its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — including allegations of collusion by associates of President Trump — the panel has made little progress and is increasingly stymied by partisan divisions that are jeopardizing the future of the inquiry, according to multiple sources involved in the probe.”
In fact, the committee has not issued a single subpoena for documents or even interview any key witnesses. ” It also hasn’t requested potentially crucial evidence — such as the emails, memos and phone records of the Trump campaign — in part because the panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has so far failed to respond to requests from the panel’s Democrats to sign letters doing so, the sources said,” the report noted.
In the three months that the Senate has been investigating the Russia election interference, the committee has made very little progress. The five part-time staffers assigned to the investigation have spent the entire time reviewing intelligence documents that were the basis for the intelligence communities assessment that Russia had interfered to help Trump win the election. The committee has also compiled a list of potential witnesses. “But some veteran Washington investigators say the committee is frittering away one of its most important assets — a sense that is aggressively moving to get to the truth,” Yahoo reported.
On Sunday, The Daily Beast reported that the Senate investigation has no full times staff working on the investigation and has not interviewed any key witnesses yet.
“More than three months after the committee announced that it had agreed on the scope of the investigation, the panel has not begun substantially investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia,” the report found.
Not only does the Senate investigation not have even one full-time staffer assigned to the investigation but “those staff members working on it part-time do not have significant investigative experience.”
The two reports make clear that Republicans are slow-walking the investigation.
You can read the full Yahoo News report here.
No Full-Time Staff, No Key Witnesses For Senate Trump-Russia Investigation: Report
