Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is dismissing President Trump’s threats of retaliatory Senate investigations into House Democrats if they begin to probe him once they take the majority in January.
“I don’t think the president can dictate to the Senate what to do to the House,” Warner said in an interview with Hill.TV which will air in full Friday morning.
“If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!” the president wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
Warner scoffed at the idea that Trump could direct the Senate, which will remain under Republican control next year, to investigate the House.
“I’m not sure Mr. Trump understands that we’re independent branches of government. And that the legislative branch was set up to be an appropriate check and balance on an executive,” he said.
He called upon Trump to allow special counsel Robert Mueller to finish his investigation in the wake of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s ouster on Wednesday, adding that he hoped the Department of Justice prosecutor would end his inquiry before 2019 begins.
“If the president is fearful about what the House may or may not do, and if he feels that there’s no there there, then let’s let the Mueller investigation finish,” Warner said. “I hope he finishes very shortly. I hope that he would be done before the end of the year. So that we could get this information out, again, particularly before the change of power.”
—Matthew Sheffield
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