House Intelligence Committee co-chairman Adam Schiff Tuesday slammed the firing of FBI Director James Comey as "a brazen interference with a criminal investigation" but stopped short of calling it a cover-up by the Trump administration.
"It's incredibly disturbing at any level," the California Democrat told Anderson Cooper on CNN. "First, you have it based on a recommendation from an attorney general who is supposed to have recused himself from an investigation."
Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month stepped aside from the FBI probe into Russian dealings in the election amid concerns about disclosures about his own communications with Moscow.
The House panel is conducting its own Russian investigation.
"This is so very hard to understand," Schiff said. "It raises a whole host of very troubling questions.
"It should never have been undertaken."
Schiff called for the appointment of a special prosecutor.
"I don't think anybody can have confidence that the president made this decision on a sound basis," he told Cooper. "Instead, everybody's going to suspect that it's in his personal interest to have Comey off the case."
However, Schiff would not call the dismissal a cover-up by the president.
"I don't know if I would call it a cover-up. But it's a brazen interference with a criminal investigation."
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