US Democrats beam searchlight on FBI probe of Trump over Russia influence

A newspaper report that the FBI investigated whether President Donald Trump has been working on behalf of Russia, against U.S. interests, will receive the attention of Democrats.

The US House Judiciary Committee led by Democratic Chairman Jerrold Nadler said his panel “will take steps to better understand both the president’s actions and the FBI’s response to that behaviour” in coming weeks. He also said lawmakers would seek to protect investigators from the president’s “increasingly unhinged attacks.”

“There is no reason to doubt the seriousness or professionalism of the FBI, as the president did in reaction to this story,” Nadler, a New York Democrat, said in a statement.

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“We have learned from this reporting that, even in the earliest days of the Trump administration, the president’s behaviour was so erratic and so concerning that the FBI felt compelled to do the unprecedented – open a counterintelligence investigation into a sitting president,” Nadler said.

According to the report by the New York Times, the probe began in the days after Trump fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May 2017.

During the reported probe by NYT, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether Trump’s actions constituted a possible threat to national security.

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