Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) thinks Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from any investigation into the White House's ties to Russia to determine whether the latter had any influence in the presidential election. Leave the job to a special prosecutor instead, Issa told Bill Maher on Friday.
"You're right that you cannot have somebody, a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions who was on the campaign and who is an appointee," Issa said. "You're going to need to use the special prosecutor's statute and office."
Other Republicans, like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said those decisions can be made further down the line.
"I think it's way getting ahead of ourselves," Cotton told Chuck Todd on Sunday's "Meet the Press." For starters, he said, "there's no indication there's a crime occurring." All the media has to go on, he said, are unnamed sources.
"If we get down that road," then Attorney General Sessions can make that decision.
Sanders said much of the same on ABC's "This Week."
“I wasn't saying that he shouldn't recuse himself or that he should. My point is I don't think we're there yet. Let's work through this process. You guys want to jump to the very end of the line. That's not how this works. Typically, you go through a congressional oversight review. We're doing that. Let's not go to the very end of the extreme. Let's let this play out the way it should.”
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Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was a bit more direct in his answer as to whether the situation requires a special prosecutor. "No," it doesn't Christie told CNN's Jake Tapper, because the "professionals" at the Justice Department have often proven themselves capable of investigating matters with a neutral lens.
We know where the president stands on the matter.
Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2017
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