Cornyn calls for special counsel investigation into Obama’s handling of 2016 Russia probe

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Sen. John Cornyn on Thursday called for a special counsel investigation into former President Barack Obama and officials in his administration over their handling of the 2016 investigation into Russian election interference.

Cornyn, R-Texas, has taken heat from the right over the years for his steadfast assertion that Russia did attempt to interfere in the 2016 election. He reasserted that belief Thursday while simultaneously calling for the Justice Department to investigate Obama — whom Trump recently accused of treason without evidence.

The Russia episode became central to Trump’s supporters’ distrust of the government officials they believe are working against the president. Cornyn’s call for a DOJ special counsel appointment lends credence to that longstanding sentiment on the right as he tries to fend off a high-profile primary challenge from Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has claimed the MAGA mantle and questioned Cornyn’s loyalty to Trump.

Cornyn said he has not discussed his suggestion that DOJ appoint a special counsel with Trump. NBC News reported Thursday that Trump does not support the special counsel request and believes the DOJ can handle the investigation without one.

Amid an uproar in the GOP base over Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents that she claims prove Obama politicized intelligence reports that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in favor of Trump. The published documents show that Obama’s team wanted to quickly assess the extent to which Russia influenced the election, but they do not appear to contain any smoking guns pointing to criminal behavior.

Cornyn, a longtime senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was part of that panel’s 2020 bipartisan investigation into the 2016 Russian interference episode, which served as a political lightning rod throughout Trump’s first term. The probe concluded that Russia posed a serious threat in its effort to interfere in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.

While the report did not definitively conclude whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, it provided evidence of contact between Russian agents and Trump advisers.

Cornyn stood by the report’s finding that Russia attempted to interfere in the election while insisting there was no evidence that Trump worked to support those efforts.

“I think there's just a lot of confusion,” he said in a brief interview. “There's no question the Russians tried to do what the Russians always tried to do. But there's no evidence of collusion.”

That was Cornyn’s belief upon the report’s release five years ago. He and other Republicans on the intelligence committee said at the time that the panel found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government as part of an addendum to the report.

Cornyn said his call for a special counsel appointment is intended to discover the extent to which Obama and his staff manipulated intelligence, as Gabbard has asserted, to achieve their desired political outcome.

“There is evidence that the Obama administration essentially started a witch hunt against President Trump, which fell under the heading of the Russian hoax investigation,” Cornyn said.

The documentation Gabbard produced for that theory — a 2017 House Republican report — argues that the intelligence community relied on poor analysis to conclude that the Kremlin preferred Trump to win the election. Gabbard said this was done at the behest of Obama and his administration officials as part of a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump.

But numerous other investigatory reports — including the Senate one that Cornyn was a part of — concluded that a Trump victory was Putin’s desired outcome in meddling.

Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement to numerous outlets that the Senate report supported the conclusion that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election, and that Gabbard had not put forward any evidence disputing that.

Texas’ other senator, Ted Cruz, called for a DOJ investigation on Fox News Wednesday, calling Gabbard’s release “a very important new trove of information.”

Gabbard cited a Dec. 9, 2016 meeting between Obama and senior intelligence officials regarding Russia as evidence of manufactured intelligence. Cruz, in a reference to Pearl Harbor, said that date will “live in infamy.”

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