On March 5, in a follow-up to President Trump’s controversial tweets, the White House called for Congress to look into how the FBI investigated Russian connections to the Trump campaign before the election. We find ourselves in the position of welcoming this call. There is now an urgent need for independent investigations—including a special prosecutor and the Justice Department’s Inspector General—to look into the underlying evidence that the FBI had of Russian connections to Americans prior to the election. And, as we lay out in great detail here, the FBI may be accused of failing to sufficiently pursue an investigation of these connections prior to the election. A failure on that level would have put the country at great risk, and political leaders now have reason to support full-blown and independent investigations. Only such independent investigations can now resolve President Trump’s concerns and these directly related issues.
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Ryan Goodman, Richard Painter: Was Comey too tardy to investigate the Russian plot?
FBI Director James Comey arrives at a news conference at FBI headquarters March 25, 2015 in Washington, DC.
