Is Donald Trump Telling The Truth About Russia? No Evidence Of Calls To Officials, Republican House Intelligence Chair Says

A top Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Monday he had not seen any evidence from any of the top U.S. intelligence agencies that anyone associated with President Donald Trump’s campaign had continuous contact with Russian officials last year, the Hill reported.

Even as Democrats continue to clamor for a full-fledged investigation, complete with a special and impartial prosecutor instead of Trump appointee, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., appeared to shoot down any ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

“There is no evidence that I’ve been presented [by the intelligence community] of regular contact with anybody in the Trump campaign,” Nunes said. “The way it sounds like to me is, it’s been looked into and there’s no evidence of anything there.”

Still, Nunes also admitted he had yet to receive all of the alleged evidence unearthed in stories by the New York Times and CNN — reports based on anonymous sources within the intelligence community that claimed members of Trump’s campaign had “repeated” or “constant” contact with Russian intelligence officials last year. The Hill said Nunes labeled his requests to the intelligence agencies as “initial.”

Nunes insisted the investigation was ongoing and answered calls by some Democrats for a special prosecutor to look into the allegations by saying that such a step should wait until there's evidence of a crime. He also alluded to the idea that former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contact with Russia's ambassador prior to Trump’s inauguration could have been inadvertently captured by normal surveillance and kept due to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“The good thing about FISA and the way it works, there should be a record of who in the government knew about General Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador and from there we should be able to know who’s in the realm of the possibles of who we would need to talk to,” Nunes said.

Trump has repeatedly denied any ties to Russia and said he didn’t know of anyone on his campaign talking to Moscow in a press conference earlier this month. However, according to several media reports, while meeting with healthcare executives in Washington Monday he was asked about a special prosecutor looking into the Russian allegations: “I haven’t called Russia in 10 years."

It’s unclear what the president meant by the statement.