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Trump may 'go down' over Russia controversy: Sen. Graham

Senate Judiciary Committee member Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks during a Senate hearing. (file photo)

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says President Donald Trump might eventually “go down” because he cannot keep quiet about the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia.

"Here's what's so frustrating for Republicans like me: You may be the first president in history to go down because you can't stop inappropriately talking about an investigation that, if you just were quiet, would clear you," Graham said on CBS's Face the Nation.

The South Carolina senator, however, said that he did not believe President Trump had obstructed justice following revelations about his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey about the Russia probe.

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Comey publicly accused the president of seeking to derail the Russian probe.

The ousted FBI chief branded Trump a liar and said the president urged him to drop the investigation into the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned earlier this year over his contacts with Russian diplomats.

Read more:

Trump slams ‘cowardly’ Comey over leaks

Trump has strongly rejected the allegations.

US President Donald Trump makes his way to board Air Force One before departing from Newark Liberty Airport in Newark, New Jersey on June 11, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Sen. Graham, meanwhile, called for former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions to also testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“That needs to be in our committee,” Graham said. “Let me tell you this, to the American people. If the attorney general's office has become a political office, that's bad for us all. So, I want to get to the bottom of that, and it should be in Judiciary.”

The senator said the chaos is proving harmful to the president's policy agenda. “At the end of the day, he’s got a good agenda, but this gets in the way of it.”

Other Republicans are also pressing Trump to come clean about whether he has tapes of private conversations with Comey and provide them to Congress if he indeed does.

"I don't understand why the president just doesn't clear this matter up once and for all," said Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Republican Sen. James Lankford agreed that the committee needed to hear any tapes that might exist. "We've obviously pressed the White House," he said.

Trump and his aides have so far dodged questions about whether conversations about the Russia investigation have been recorded.  


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