Last updated on May 25th, 2018 at 08:58 am
Rep. Michael Conaway (R-TX) supposedly led the Russia investigation, but he fell apart on Meet The Press when questioned about Trump/Russia collusion.
Video:
The guy who led the House Russia investigation can’t give a straight answer on Trump/Russia collusion. https://t.co/XnIX6oGZ4d pic.twitter.com/2eGQi5DbrU
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 18, 2018
Transcript via Meet The Press:
CHUCK TODD:
All right, I want to ask you, I know you’re now saying that your committee was not focused on the collusion idea. You said on Monday in a conference call, “At the end of the day we believe that the broader evidence available to us was that they,” referring to the Russians, “Favored her,” Hillary Clinton, “Over him,” Donald Trump. “And the main issue was to sow discord.” The next day, you reversed that statement saying, “No, no, no, no they were targeting– they were trying to help Donald Trump.” Definitively, what is your conclusion on this?
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
Well, everybody gets to make their own mind. What we did with the ICA, which was what drove those com — those comments, and I got us off on the wrong track, quite frankly, is that we wanted to look at the analytical integrity of that process throughout the ICA. And we agree with most of it. We’ll have a second report on this– that effort. But the idea that, that Putin wanted to help Trump that came out of the ICA, we don’t believe that was supported by the standard tradecraft of analytics. Each of us gets to make up our own mind of what, what we said happened. Only Putin knows for sure what he was doing during that time frame. And he might have changed his ideas across that, that, you know, six year–
(OVERTALK)
CHUCK TODD:
But you just said, you just said your job wasn’t to figure out if there was collusion in the committee.
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
That’s right.
CHUCK TODD:
Okay. Then why is Devin Nunes claiming, “Well, there’s no evidence of collusion” if you didn’t even investigate this aspect of it?
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
Well, I don’t, you know, well, that’s (UNINTEL) – there’s a chance Todd that I don’t understand. Say that again.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, Devin Nunes has gone out there saying all the evidence he’s seen, there is no, there has been no collusion.
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
No evidence of collusion.
CHUCK TODD:
No evidence of collusion.
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
Right.
CHUCK TODD:
But if you’re not investigating collusion then you haven’t–
(OVERTALK)
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
That’s all we–
CHUCK TODD:
–the evidence.
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
That’s all we investigated. We didn’t investigate conspir– or his obstruction of justice issue. We– that’s what we investigated, was there collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians or was there collusion between the Clinton campaign and the Russians?
CHUCK TODD:
Did you interview George Papadopoulos?
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
No, we did not.
CHUCK TODD:
Okay. If you didn’t interview George Papadopoulos, somebody who apparently is the person that triggered the investigation because he was bragging about potential access to damaging information on Hillary Clinton, if you didn’t interview him, just that one, and there’s other people you didn’t interview, how can you draw this conclusion–
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
Well–
CHUCK TODD:
–definitively?
REP. MICHAEL CONAWAY:
–he got outside the opportunity for us to interview him when he was charged and is caught up in the Mueller investigation. We’re trying to stay away from the Mueller investigation and not confuse that or hurt it one way or the other. So that part of the timing – front. The other issue is we couldn’t feel a real good link between the Papadopoulos himself and his braggadociosness and the Trump campaign. He was kind of at the edge of the circumstances. And after he–
CHUCK TODD:
How do you know that if you didn’t interview him?
To recap, there was no collusion, but Republicans don’t know if there was no collusion, because they didn’t interview the witnesses. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but Republicans found no collusion between Trump and Russia, basically because they didn’t bother to look.
If Conaway’s answers to Todd are representative of how he conducted the Russia investigation, then the investigations in the House majority need to be investigated. Rep. Conaway’s answers were more than fishy. They were nonsensical and contradictory.
The Russia scandal is bigger than Trump and the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee who carried out this cover-up now find themselves in a world of potential trouble.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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