Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Monday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions ought to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election, in order to determine in part “if anyone in the Trump campaign had any direct conversations with someone from Russia.”
Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, also implied to Bloomberg Politics that the Trump administration was in the middle of a “coverup”
“The downfall does not come from the crime, it comes from the coverup, and that’s what we’re dealing with now,” he said. “We need to know if anyone in the Trump campaign had any direct conversations with someone from Russia.”
“It’s hard to imagine how some of these leaks could have been so conveniently timed if there wasn’t coordination,” he told Bloomberg.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer seemed to reject the idea of a special prosecutor Monday – “What are you asking people to investigate?” he asked the reporter who asked him about it – but Durbin said an independent investigation was a matter of political will.
The New York Times and CNN reported on Feb. 14 that members of the Trump campaign had had repeated contact with Russian nationals, including intelligence officials. The White House has hit back against the story, including with a recently acknowledged effort to connect journalists to congressional intelligence chairs and intelligence officials critical of the Times’ reporting.