The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday it’s no surprise President Donald Trump reportedly overrode the intelligence community on granting son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner security clearance.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Mark Warner,D-Va., said Trump has bucked the intel community before.
“The whole idea that the president arbitrarily picks which family members to get security clearances overriding the advice of the intelligence community… we shouldn't be surprised at that,” he said.
“Instead this president seems to choose the word of dictators over the words of our intelligence community,” he added. “Whether it was in the death of Otto Warmbier or in the question of believing Vladimir Putin about Russia's nonintervention in our elections, whether it was believing the leadership of Saudi Arabia about the death of [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi. There's a pattern here that is repeated that we should all be concerned about.”
Warner also asserted that “three facts that … were new to the investigation” of possible collusion were unveiled by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee last week.
He listed them as Cohen’s revelation that he and Trump “misled the American public for months about the whole notion of trying to get a Trump Tower project going in Moscow.” He also said Cohen indicated Trump learned in a phone call from Roger Stone that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “was about to drop damaging information about Hillary Clinton. “
“And finally, we have this whole question where… Mr. Trump knew about the meeting in Trump Tower that included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the campaign manager, Paul Manafort,” Warner said.
“So anyone that says there's no evidence of collaboration [between the Trump campaign and Russia], there's plenty of evidence,” he said.
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