McCain: Congress doesn’t have ‘credibility’ to handle Russia probes

Congress no longer has the credibility to independently tackle a probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and President Trump and his associates’ ties to Moscow, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday.

“It’s a bizarre situation, and what I think, the reason why I’m calling for this select committee or a special committee, is I think that this back-and-forth and what the American people have found out so far that no longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone,” McCain told MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren. “And I don’t say that lightly.”

McCain’s comments come amid an increasingly bitter feud that erupted between members of the House Intelligence Committee earlier Wednesday, after the panel’s chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) claimed that he had seen evidence that the U.S. intelligence community incidentally surveilled members of Trump’s transition team.

{mosads}The inadvertent surveillance, Nunes said, was not tied to ongoing Russia investigation.

The committee’s top Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) fired back, blasting Nunes for routing the committee before briefing Trump himself on the apparent findings and saying that the move “casts quite a profound cloud” over the panel’s investigation.

Other Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), also ripped Nunes for the decision, and called for an independent commission to lead the probe.

McCain has been a vocal supporter of creating a special committee to investigate the matter. But that notion has been rejected by Republican congressional leaders, who argued that the House and Senate intelligence panels were capable of handling the investigation.