Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said Wednesday that the Republican Party leadership has been “too timid” in dealing with the various Russia-related controversies plaguing the Democrats, and said he believes it is because the leadership is “uncomfortable” with President Trump.
In the interview with Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong, Rohrabacher said Republicans should hold hearings related to the connections between Hillary Clinton and the partial sale of Uranium One to Russian energy giant Rosatom under the Obama administration — a deal that gave 20 percent of U.S. uranium stocks to Russia.
Additionally, he called for probes into recent revelations that Hillary Clinton’s campaign funded the “Trump dossier” put together by Fusion GPS — a company that is alleged to have ties to the Kremlin.
“We need to have a serious set of hearings open to the public so the public will be able to see what’s going on,” he said. “I will tell you that the Republican Party has been too timid about this and I believe that’s because some of our leaders feel uncomfortable with Donald Trump and they were supporting other candidates during the primary process.”
Rohrabacher noted that he supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), not Trump, during the primaries. However, he said it was important that Democrats, as well as Republicans, recognize that Trump won the election fairly:
The American people have spoken, the election of Donald Trump was not a collusion with Russians and a stealing of the election, it was an honest reflection of the voters of this country and our system and the fact that the Democrats continued to shove this lie down our throat every day constantly for months, that: ‘Oh this election was stolen by Trump collusion with Russia,’ that was a disservice.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded Fusion GPS’s research into Trump’s alleged ties with Russia. Fusion GPS is accused of ties to the Kremlin and of running a smear campaign against Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
The controversy surrounding the sale of Uranium One and the connection to the Clinton Foundation was broken in 2015 by Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer in his book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.
However, it returned to the news last week when the Hill reported that the FBI had been investigating Russian kickbacks and bribery ahead of the 2010 deal. It also reported that the Russians had funneled millions of dollars into the U.S. to be given to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton, then-secretary of state, was on the board that greenlit the sale of Uranium One.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as two House committees, have announced probes into the circumstances of the sale in light of the Hill’s reporting.
In the interview, Rohrabacher also responded to claims he was too close to Russia. The Daily Beast reported that GOP leaders have curtailed his travel and ability to conduct official business amid fears he has been compromised by his ties to Russia.
He noted that he was a fierce anti-communist, helped write some of President Ronald Reagan’s toughest speeches on the Soviet Union, and even fought against the Soviets alongside the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
“The bottom line is I’ve never been pro or anti Russian, I was anti-communist, anti-Soviet Union and even today I think that of course Putin’s regime is flawed,” he said. “But I think however it may be flawed – but it’s no longer the communist threat that it was and thus we should find ways that are mutually beneficial to the U.S and Russia to work together.”
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY
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