White House spokesperson: ‘Time to move on’ from Russia probes

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that it was “time to move on” from the investigations into ties between Trump campaign officials and Russia, hours after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

“I think the bigger point on that is, my gosh, Tucker, when are they going to let that go? It’s been going on for nearly a year,” she said on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. “Frankly, it’s kind of getting absurd. There’s nothing there. We’ve heard that time and time again. We’ve heard that in the testimonies earlier this week. We’ve heard it for the last 11 months. There is no ‘there’ there.”

“It’s time to move on, and, frankly, it’s time to focus on the things the American people care about,” she added.

Sanders, though, said she also believed Comey’s firing would not impact the ongoing investigations.

{mosads}“I don’t think it affects at all in any capacity whatsoever,” she said. “You will have the same people that will be carrying it out to the Department of Justice. The process continues both, I believe, in the House and Senate committees, and I don’t see any change or disruption there.”

Comey testified before a congressional panel that the FBI is investigating allegations of collusion between Trump aides and Moscow to influence the 2016 presidential election. Committees in the House and Senate have also opened probes on the matter.

President Trump sparked a firestorm of controversy Tuesday when he abruptly fired the FBI director.

Democrats reacted furiously to the firing, calling it a “Constitutional crisis” and an attempt to bury the investigations. 

They are demanding Congress appoint an independent special prosecutor to take up the matter.

Many Republicans have come to Trump’s defense, saying the FBI director serves at the president’s discretion and that Comey had lost the confidence of his peers by politicizing his role during the campaign and in congressional testimony after.

“If Hillary Clinton had won, which thank God she didn’t, but if she had, Comey would have been fired immediately and these same Democrats that are criticizing the president’s decision today would be dancing in the streets,” Sanders said.

Sanders also kicked Comey on his way out the door, saying he had “lost the confidence of the rank-and-file within the FBI.”

“He certainly lost the confidence for members of both sides, Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate, and, frankly, most importantly, he lost the confidence of the American people,” Sanders said. “This was a guy who was being questioned day after day after day whether he was capable of leading the FBI.

“If you know somebody is incapable of doing the job, particularly one as important as leading the FBI, they don’t have the confidence of the people that they need to report to, and they have quite frankly politicized the role, then it is time for them to go and there’s no reason to sit on it.”

— This story was updated at 9:29 p.m.