On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” Rep.Adam Schiff (D-CA) responded to Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) statement that he has seen no proof of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign by saying, “I have to disagree with my colleague in terms of whether there is any evidence of collusion. I believe that there is.” Schiff later added that it’s “certainly premature” to say that there will be no proof of collusion.
Anchor Chris Cuomo asked Schiff, “No proof, Peter King says. I’ve seen no proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Carter Page says the allegations are laughable. What do you say?”
Schiff answered, “Well, Carter Page is a person of interest to the committee, and I think, probably likely to come before the committee, so I don’t want to comment on anything he’s had to say in particular. But I do think that we need to get to the bottom of these allegations of collusion or coordination. I have to disagree with my colleague in terms of whether there is any evidence of collusion. I believe that there is. But nonetheless, this is something that we need to investigate. I think there was a reason why the FBI began its investigation, and why it continues that investigation. I don’t think it’s something the FBI does without any basis. But that’s about as much as I can say without going into particulars. I will say this, I think it would be deeply irresponsible of us not to follow the facts wherever they lead, to do it objectively and not to predetermine a conclusion. But there’s certainly, as we have seen from many of the public reports, ample reason to do this investigation.”
He later added that the investigation “shouldn’t be seen as a failure if we do our job, and we follow the facts wherever they lead and we reach a unified conclusion. We shouldn’t go into this with the object that we want to score this political point or that political point or we want to come up ultimately, with a certain conclusion. we’ll be doing our job if we thoroughly investigate this, and if we can reach a sound determination about what happened, what the Russians did, the different levers the Russians pulled. We know the Russians used a variety of techniques to interfere in elections in Europe. We know they used some of those techniques here, and we want to find out about everything the Russians did.”
Schiff was later asked, “Can you say with confidence at this point, that it is premature for people to say there’s going to be no proof of collusion?”
He responded, “Yes. It’s certainly premature. And one of the challenges we have, Chris, in the investigation is, there are the members of the gang of eight in the committee that have received certain information, and then there’s the rest of the committee members. And what I’ve been urging the FBI is to share the information that the gang of eight has received with the full committee, so that we’re all on the same page, we’re all doing the same investigation, but that’s an issue that has yet to be resolved.”
(h/t RCP Video)
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