Pressure is mounting on the US security agencies to disclose vastly more about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia as the president is signaling a crackdown on the intelligence community in response.
Democrats in Congress, including the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, are pressing the interim director of national intelligence for a “comprehensive” briefing over the next two weeks, sparked by Monday’s resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn over his discussion of sanctions easement with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.
Among the material Pelosi and senior House intelligence committee Democrat Adam Schiff seek are the intercepted conversations Flynn had with Kislyak, which would resolve the uncertainty surrounding a potential quid pro quo with Moscow for what the intelligence agencies believe was Russian interference in the 2016 election to aid Trump.
It would also hand the Democrats a powerful weapon against the White House, even as Trump claims that they are the true wellspring of an avalanche of leaks against him. “The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story - RUSSIA,” he tweeted on Thursday morning. The “306” was a reference to his electoral college total.
Pelosi and Schiff, whose committee is already investigating Trump-Russia connections, cited the “severity and urgency of the counterintelligence threat from Moscow” in a letter to Michael Dempsey, who is acting as director of national intelligence ahead of a confirmation hearing for Trump nominee Dan Coats.
“This briefing should include information about former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials, and should also provide unredacted transcripts of any intercepted communications he had with Russian officials,” the pair wrote to Dempsey on Thursday.
At the same time, the Senate judiciary committee’s Democrats are demanding that the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recuse himself from any internal inquiry into contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, of which Sessions was a leading member.
“We also ask that you take all necessary steps to ensure that these investigations continue unimpeded and free from political pressure or interference,” every committee Democrat wrote to Sessions on Thursday.
As well, the nine Democratic senators requested that the White House counsel, Department of Justice and FBI “preserve and are preserving all materials” relevant to Trump’s contacts with Russia, a step carrying overtones of a criminal investigation.
The extent and character of Trump’s links with Russia are increasingly the backdrop to everything the Trump administration does. Trump on Thursday pledged over Twitter to put a “spotlight” on the “low-life leakers” even as he accused the media of making up sources for an array of stories that refute key aspects of the White House’s portrayal of those ties.
The intelligence agencies have seen Trump vacillate between cultivation, detente and hostility toward them several times since his election. Some within have feared a purge or a marginalization by Trump after assessing Russian interference in the campaign. Trump has accused leakers of “criminal” disclosures of intelligence, a seeming reference to – and perhaps accidental validation of – the Flynn-Kislyak intercepts.
Those fears are likely to accelerate after a report in the New York Times that Trump intends to put a loyalist, Stephen A Feinberg, in charge of a long-rumored “review” of the intelligence agencies for structural changes.
It is unknown how Feinberg will work with Coats. Coats’s nomination is said to be in limbo while the Senate intelligence committee – of which, as an Indiana senator, he was once a member – scrutinizes his paperwork. Yet Coats is expected to have his confirmation hearing scheduled after the Senate returns on 27 February from a recess.
