Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey would not impede that committee’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump associates and Russia.
“I just heard about it walking to the interview with you,” Manchin told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“At first blush I will just tell you, it is not going to impede our investigation in finding out where the Intel Committee basically is going to get its information,” he continued. “We still look forward to Mr. Comey coming before us the same as we do Sally Yates coming before us, so that will not change our investigation, and basically we’ve always said this: We will follow the intel and intel will take us with the facts and that will lead us to the truth.”
Blitzer asked Manchin if Comey’s firing recalled a “Saturday Night Massacre,” a reference to the night then-President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate Scandal.
“To call it massacre, I don’t think you can do that,” Manchin said. “To say it was unexpected, absolutely. To say it’s shocking, you betcha.”
He added: “We are looking forward to him coming in very shortly to the Senate Intelligence Committee. We are sure looking forward to that. Maybe with more anticipation than before.”
In an interview with Fox News, Manchin said “the only thing I am hopeful for right now is whoever the President recommends for confirmation, advise and consent from the Senate, it’s someone that we can all gather around, it’s someone that we have confidence in and it can be overwhelmingly bipartisan.”
“I am hoping the 51 vote nuclear option is nowhere even needed because there is somebody so well-respected and well-qualified to take that position,” he said.
Sit down and STFU, Joe. Let the folks who are at least semi-reliable handle this.
Not going to impede? Screw that, it needs to expedite a special prosecutor…
Might I suggest Sally Yates as Comey’s replacement ? And now, back to my crack pipe…
Senate Committee will grill Comey about his handling of the Hillary emails. Al Franken will then ask leading questions that repeat well-known facts and theories. Any telling questions will be met by the response that it’s confidential and secret. And after a couple of hours, it will be over, and the media will be writing about the buildup to war in Afghanistan. The point being, there are no institutions left, unless Trump appoints a straightshooter to lead the FBI, that will contain this President and the one-party-state GOP. There is very little left to stop them from declaring victory in the 2018 midterms even though the Democrats have won. The Congressional and Gubernatorial Democrats CAN do something about this: declare a state of democratic emergency and bring the crisis into the realm of reality. The Republic has been systematically undermined by the GOP for 20 years, and the charade of a functioning democracy must be abandoned.
What Senate investigation?