The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee says the panel is starting to see ‘the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice’ against the president<\/b>
\nA Senate investigation into connections between Donald Trump\u2019s campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 U. S. election suggests a potential case of obstruction of justice is developing against the president, Senator Dianne Feinstein said.
\u201cWhat we\u2019re beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice,\u201d Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Sunday on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d about the committee\u2019s investigation.
\u201cWe see this in the indictments, the four indictments, and pleas that have just taken place, and some of the comments that are being made,\u201d said Feinstein, who\u2019s also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. \u201cI see it in the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House: the comments every day, the continual tweets.\u201d
Feinstein was referring to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, who face charges including money laundering uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation; former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos; and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The latter two pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
The California senator said the most important instance was Trump\u2019s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, which she believes was \u201cdirectly because he did not agree to \u2018lift the cloud\u2019 of the Russia investigation\u201d as he said Trump requested.
\u201cThat\u2019s obstruction of justice,\u201d Feinstein said.
Feinstein, 84, said her concern about the Trump White House \u201crises with the day\u201d and hit a tipping point about a month ago. \u201cThere is a kind of instability, unpredictability,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s one issue after the other.\u201d
In a statement released on Friday, Feinstein called Flynn\u2019s guilty plea on Friday regarding his conversations with Russians a \u201cstunning revelation.\u201d
\u201cThis shows a Trump associate negotiating with the Russians against U. S. policy and interests before Donald Trump took office and after it was announced that Russia had interfered in our election,\u201d Feinstein said in the statement.
Asked on Sunday on NBC whether Trump is a target of the investigation, Feinstein said she assumes that \u201cmany in the White House are under investigation in this\u201d and that she doesn\u2019t believe that Flynn \u201cwas a rogue agent.\u201d
\u201cI think he had to have been directed,\u201d Feinstein said. \u201cNow whether the special counsel can find that evidence or not, whether we can, I don\u2019t know yet. But I see that that\u2019s where this is going.\u201d
In a separate \u201cMeet the Press\u201d interview, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said Mueller\u2019s investigation was \u201cmaking progress.\u201d
Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she didn\u2019t know whether collusion had taken place between Russia and the Trump campaign, \u201cbut what we do know is there were conversations during the transition period.\u201d
There\u2019s only one president during the transition period and that was President Barack Obama, so those conversations \u201cshould not have been taking place, but that does not confirm collusion,\u201d Collins said.
Senator Angus King of Maine said Sunday that the Senate Intelligence Committee is focused more on Russia\u2019s actions during 2016 than on Trump and his associates and is not looking into obstruction of justice.
\u201cThe hot political issue of Trump and the Russians and the campaign is obscuring the larger issue, which is: the Russians attacked our democracy, and they\u2019re going to do it again,\u201d King, an independent who typically caucuses with Democrats, said on CBS\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d
In November, officials from Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google and Twitter Inc. faced hours of questioning from members of Congress \u2014 including the Senate Intelligence Committee \u2014 about how their platforms were used by Russian operatives to manipulate voters in 2016.
Bloomberg.com<\/p>\n

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