WHAT DID AMERICA LEARN FROM THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HEARING?

 

…The lying, sneering, American president.

 

We are now told by the FBI & the NSA that the current president has lied about President Obama.

 

FBI Director James B. Comey and Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the NSA, appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to speak about Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, including potential connections between President Trump’s inner circle and the Kremlin.

 

 

This was the first time Director Comey and Rogers have testified publicly since Trump took office two months ago.  Since then, Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned and Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from Trump-related investigations.

 

In recent weeks, Trump joined the fray with counter-accusations of his own, such as his unfounded charge that the Obama administration conducted a wiretap of his phones at Trump Tower in New York.

 

 

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee confirmed on “Fox News Sunday” that there was no evidence to suggest that Trump was wiretapped. Rep. Devin Nunes ­(R-CA) said he had seen Justice Department documents requested by the panel confirming that information.  These documents were turned over to his committee on the Friday before the hearing.

 

“Was there a physical wiretap of Trump Tower? No, and there never was, and the information we got last Friday continued to lead us in that direction,” Nunes said.

 

The Intelligence Committee hearing was finally an opening for getting public answers on these topics. Former spy chiefs and administration officials will soon be appearing before the panel to give their info on what, if anything, transpired between Trump’s team and Russian officials during the heat of the presidential campaign.

 

But as intelligence officials publicly answer lawmakers’ questions, political jockeying has cast a cloud over efforts to probe how deep the counterintelligence investigation involving the president’s inner circle really goes.

 

These intelligence officials came up with five areas that the viewers considered during the House Intelligence Committee hearing:

 

1.     Republicans didn’t stop the bleeding, but the Democrats didn’t unearth a smoking gun either.

 

Republicans continued to scramble in helping the president avoid a scandal since the allegations first surfaced about contacts between Trump’s team and Russian officials.

 

Rep. Nunes has repeatedly said he believes there is no evidence of improper contact, taking pains to shift the focus of the investigation toward ferreting out who leaked information about such contacts to the media.  They are still trying to say that the actual leaks are the only “major crimes” that occurred, but the hearing made it clear that Trump and the Russian connections were also a big issue.

 

Trump has again complicated Republicans’ efforts with his insistence that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower.  This is an assertion GOP leaders could not, and will not try, to defend. In recent days, some influential Republicans have even called on Trump to apologize to former president Barack Obama.  But we all know, that ain’t gonna happen.

 

Unfortunately, the Democrats have yet to find that smoking gun that the president, or his top surrogates, dealt with Russian authorities to swing the election in Trump’s favor. That is a tall order, based on the conversations thus far disclosed: Flynn and Sessions bowed out of their roles because they had misled the vice president and lawmakers, respectively, not because they admitted to discussing anything improper with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.  But after further investigation, that too could change.

 

The Democrats focused on links not just between people who served in Trump’s administration and Russian authorities, but those that also dealt between top campaign surrogates such as former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser Carter Page.  These two had serious financial and business ties to Russians and their allies and are under further investigation.

 

2. FBI Director Comey admits to an official FBI investigation into Trump and the Russians?

 

Many news outlets have now reported that the FBI and the Justice Department are conducting probes into the allegations surrounding Russia, the 2016 elections and the Trump team. Comey has now admitted to this publicly on Capitol Hill and under oath.

 

3. Was it just about wiretapping, or was there other surveillance?

 

We now know that the Justice Department had no information to back up Trump’s claim that the Obama administration was tapping his phones in Trump Tower. Comey had been pushing the Justice Department to come clean about that for a while.

 

What we still do not know, though, is whether there were wiretaps of Trump’s affiliates outside the tower, or in the course of other investigations, whether the intelligence community picked up on communications the president or his team had with Russia during the campaign or the transition period.

 

This sort of “incidental collection” has already helped to take down one member of Trump’s team, Flynn, caught on tape speaking with Kislyak, whose communications were being watched. Nunes has suggested there could be others popping up in such indirect surveillance, possibly even the president himself.

 

The House Intelligence Committee is still waiting on answers to a request for a complete list of names of people who have been “unmasked” during surveillance operations. Committee leaders announced Friday that the NSA “partially” responded to their request for that list. But the FBI and CIA have not.

 

And remember: Though Nunes has laid to rest speculation the government bugged the phones of Trump Tower, he has not yet commented on whether there were wiretaps of others connected to Trump, outside the tower. The committee’s request covered a very wide range of individuals, including Trump’s business associates, his relatives and his friends, but there has been no response.

 

4.     Did some Republicans double-cross the White House?

 

An investigation that began as a probe focused on allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections has expanded.  It has not just included whether Russian authorities had direct contacts with campaign officials. The investigation now encompasses going after leakers in the Trump administration for publicizing the information linking Trump surrogates to Kremlin officials. It also includes the query about incidental collection, to see whether the intelligence community adhered closely to the law as it was doing its job.

 

In this highly charged atmosphere, GOP members directed their questions at Comey and Rogers while the Democrats focused on the connections between the Trump team and Russia. Those Republicans who pursued similar questions as the Dems were knowingly and openly crossing the White House.

 

It was far safer for Republicans to focus on questions about leaks, which are what the Trump team and Nunes say are the real crime, still there were those that went along with the Dems.

 

The GOP showed they are not united around Trump.  Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said a month ago: “All of us know that leaks happen in this town, and we all don’t like it…but the fact is that you now have a much larger issue to address.”

 

5. Where do we go from here?

 

The pomp and circumstance surrounding this hearing was considerable and understandable, given the investigation, the politics surrounding it and the guest list.  But how much new information did we really learn? The answer is that we learned that the Trump administration is under an official investigation by the FBI and the Justice dept.  We learned about the Russian hacking and that there are leaks in the Trump administration like a sieve.

 

Comey was very careful about what he said publicly on this matter. More than once, he had come to the Hill for closed-door briefings and the members have emerged frustrated.  But the lawmakers did succeed in getting some damning and conclusive responses out of the duo. The investigation did turn dramatically against the unsubstantiated tweets from the president, and from this point going forward, anything could happen and probably will.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017