After a week of partisan rancor that threatened to bring down the House’s probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election, the Senate is quickly realizing it may be the only chamber left that can produce findings free of the cloud of White House meddling. “You don’t have the kind of blow-ups [in the Senate] you had at the House,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Politico. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been able to avoid the partisan fissures that have weakened its House counterpart, and began conducting private interviews with intelligence officials last week. Sources say it also plans to interview Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, who had met in December with the Russian ambassador.
“Trust me, I feel the — everybody on the committee feels — the responsibility to continue to try to do this right,” said the Senate committee’s top Democrat, Mark Warner of Virginia, who is leading the upper chamber’s Russia investigation alongside Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.).
That’s a far cry from the acrimony dividing the House Intelligence Committee, whose Democrats maintain that their panel’s probe is shrouded in suspicion after Chairman Devin Nunes made explosive public comments last week about alleged incidental surveillance of Trump transition team members by the Obama administration. The House committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, later accused the White House of pressuring the committee to cancel an upcoming public hearing.
Full Article: House spat leaves Senate in driver’s seat on Russia probe – POLITICO.