Schiff: Evidence of Trump team collusion with Russia ‘more than circumstantial’

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that there is “more than circumstantial” evidence pointing to collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In an interview with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said evidence suggesting that members of President Trump’s campaign conspired with the Kremlin to influence the presidential election in Trump’s favor was “more than circumstantial,” and needed to be thoroughly probed.

“I can tell you that the case is more than that,” Schiff said. “And I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now.”

{mosads}”I don’t want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation. So that is what we ought to do.”

Schiff was responding to assertions by Todd that all evidence pointing to coordination between Trump aides and Moscow up to this point was purely circumstantial and that no direct evidence of wrongdoing has yet been revealed. 

Schiff called for the creation of a special commission to investigate Russian election meddling and Trump and his associates’ potential ties to Moscow. And he blasted Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who revealed earlier on Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community had incidentally collected information on members of Trump’s campaign team, and briefed the president on the matter without consulting with the committee first.

The collected intel, Nunes said, had nothing to do with investigations into Trump’s associates’ potential ties to Russia and were gathered as part of routine legal surveillance of foreign targets.

But he said he was concerned nonetheless, particularly that names of Americans had been unmasked in the intelligence reports.

Schiff said earlier Wednesday that Nunes’s decision to bypass the committee and go directly to Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) with the findings “casts quite a profound cloud over our ability to do our work.”