White House: Wait to see if special prosecutor needed in Russian probe

Photo Courtesy: UPI

Feb. 26 (UPI) — A White House spokeswoman said Sunday it’s too early to decide whether the attorney general should recuse himself and appoint a special prosecutor to examine Russia’s role in the 2016 election.

Jeff Sessions, while serving as a U.S. senator, was an adviser during Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign and was appointed to run the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. Democrats say he can’t be impartial in the investigation.

“I don’t think we’re there yet,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House deputy press secretary, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”

Then she clarified her comments: “I wasn’t saying that he shouldn’t recuse himself or that he should. My point is I don’t think we’re there yet. Let’s work through this process. You guys want to jump to the very end of the line. That’s not how this works. Typically, you go through a congressional oversight review. We’re doing that. Let’s not go to the very end of the extreme. Let’s let this play out the way it should.”

Sanders said there were no efforts by the Trump campaign to collude with Russians.

“We’re confident whatever review that Congress wants to do, I think that’s the first step,” she said. “If they want to take that on, which there are two committees that are currently doing that, we’re extremely confident that, whatever review, they’re all going to come to the same conclusion — that we had no involvement in this.”

She pointed out Democrats can’t get past their loss in November.

“The bigger thing here is, if Democrats want to continue to relive their loss every single day, by doing an investigation or review after review, that’s fine by us,” she said. “We know why we won this race. It’s because we had the better candidate with the better message. They didn’t campaign in the right places. They didn’t have a good candidate, and if they want to continue to relive that loss every single day, then we welcome that.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said later on the ABC program: “The attorney general must recuse himself.”

On Friday, a leading Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, said a special prosecutor would be appropriate.

“And we have been called, we have 100 now plus one Republican on Eric Swallow’s bill for an outside, independent commission to study the personal, political, and financial relationship between President Trump and the Russians,” Pelosi said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a vocal Trump supporter during the campaign, said on CNN’s State of the Union he sees need for a special prosecutor.

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