Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Thursday that if there had been collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, “it would have been leaked a long time ago.”
Rubio is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which this week announced that it concurred with a 2017 assessment by various intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.
“Russia has meddled in other elections, and propaganda isn’t new,” Rubio told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer in an interview. “They went to a new level last year, primarily to sow instability and chaos in our society, but ultimately they may have grown into a preference for the President.”
“What do you think? Do you think there was collusion during this election or not?” Hemmer asked.
“We’ve seen no evidence of that to this point,” Rubio said, repeating a Republican talking point with regard to the various probes of Trump’s campaign. He argued that “the best thing that can happen here for the President is for all the facts to come out.”
“Even it takes another year or even two years?” Hemmer asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Let me tell you this,” Rubio responded, “if there was anything about collusion, it would have been leaked a long time ago and everybody would have been talking about it.”
“But, you know, we’re still doing our work. Mueller’s still doing his work. We’ll see. But let me just reiterate what I said, and read into it what you might. Let the truth come out. I think that’s the best thing for the country and the President, believe me.”
