Following his controversial statement that "There is no factual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Sen. Richard Burr and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian interference in our election and government have come under renewed scrutiny. As Natasha Bertrand writes in The Atlantic:
Moreover, the House Democrats’ willingness to launch a full investigation into Trump's financial history may not be "politically realistic" in the Republican-controlled Senate, said one of the people with direct knowledge of the Senate’s investigation. “The follow-the-money pieces of this are really important, but the question is who is best positioned to do it,” this person said, referring to the committee’s jurisdictional limitations. The source added that it was “absolutely fair” to criticize the panel’s decision not to bring in outside investigators with expertise in financial investigations, ethics, and money laundering. “But I give full credit to Burr and Warner for keeping this investigation bipartisan, in a very difficult environment on such a fraught issue,” the source said.
Burr recently defended the decision not to hire outside investigators, telling CBS that they “would've never had access to some of the documents that we were able to access from the intelligence community." A spokesperson for Warner declined to comment on whether the senator agreed with that assessment. A Republican committee aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the panel’s staff, reiterated that Burr has “full confidence in the bipartisan investigative staff, who were selected by both himself and the Vice Chairman. Over the last two years, members of the Committee on both sides of the aisle have praised the investigators’ work and integrity.”
But Ryan Goodman, an expert in national security law, told me he saw “red flags” in the way the investigation was being carried out, including the chairman’s “failure to hire outside staff with professional expertise and experience in complex investigations, and the failure to use the subpoena power to easily obtain financial records from entities like Deutsche Bank.”
The article also addresses the question about Christopher Steele’s cooperation:
Posts and comments here and elsewhere echo the thought that even though Burr may have presented himself as someone more interested in truth than in politics, we remember that he has long ties to the NRA is a Republican politician:
- Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr reeling from phone call on behalf of Trump (Salon, Feb. 28, 2017)
- NC senators got more money from the NRA than most lawmakers. Here’s why. (Charlotte Observer, Feb. 15, 2018)
- Documents Show NRA and Republican Candidates Coordinated Ads in Key Senate Races (Rolling Stone, Jan. 11, 2019)
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Senators Overseeing Two NRA-Russia Probes Are Top NRA Allies (The Trace, Jan. 18, 2019)
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Richard Burr Has Misled the Public About Russian Election Interference Before (Slate, Feb. 13, 2019)
One more quote from Bertrand’s article:
The reinvigorated House probe intends to pursue avenues of inquiry that may have been overlooked by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee investigation, including the substance of Trump’s closed-door conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the last two years. A particular emphasis will also be placed on Deutsche Bank—the Trump family’s bank of choice for decades that was fined in 2017 over a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme involving its Moscow, New York and London branches. “The concern about Deutsche Bank is that they have a history of laundering Russian money,” Schiff told NBC in December. “This, apparently, was the one bank that was willing to do business with the Trump Organization,” Schiff said. “If this is a form of compromise, it needs to be exposed.” Deutsche Bank representatives said last month that the bank was working with the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees to “determine the best and most appropriate way of assisting them in their official oversight functions.”
What a difference the 2018 election of Dems to the House makes! And may the trend continue with the Senate in 2020 — undoing the damage from this “administration” is going to be a heavy lift!