WASHINGTON: As demands for an independent inquiry into US President Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia grew louder, Republican lawmakers agreed on Thursday to look into Russian involvement in the 2016 US elections. Also on Thursday, a former senior counter-terrorism official called for setting up a commission similar to Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to investigate the charges.

Since Monday night, when Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign for making five phone calls to Russian ambassador Sergey Kisylak on a single day, the debate in Washington is focused on one question: who asked Flynn to make those calls? Trump’s political adversaries blame him but his defenders are deflecting the issue by promising to find out what, not who, caused the retired general to do so.

“It is now readily apparent that General Flynn’s resignation is not the end of the story. It is merely a beginning of a much longer story,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on the Senate floor.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, did not accept Democrats’ demand for setting up a special committee for investigating the charges but did promise to hold a probe. “We are going to look at Russian involvement in the US election. It’s a significant issue,” he said on MSNBC television. Another Republican, Bob Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign said “Russia’s the elephant in the room,” and agreed with the Democrats that this is “what we [the lawmakers] need to be dealing with”.

The US media noted that in his Wednesday afternoon news conference, Trump called Flynn “a wonderful man” who was treated very unfairly by the fake media because of illegal leaks.

Media commentators used this statement to argue that had there been no media uproar, Trump would have kept Flynn in the White House, although the US Justice Department had informed him on Jan 26 that Flynn was a security risk because he was vulnerable to blackmail.

In a piece he wrote for The Politico magazine, Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, who served as coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department between 2009-2012, said he believed much of the focus of the coverage of Flynn’s resignation had missed a key part — namely who told him to make the call to Russia. “The real story is not Flynn. But it isn’t government leaks, either. No, the “real story here” is Trump himself —and the continuing mystery of his ties to Russia.”

NBC News, however, issued statements of a number of prominent US lawyers and scholars on this issue who argued that linking Trump to “some broader conspiracy” would require much more evidence than is now available but the question will continue to irk the administration. “The lingering concerns could develop into a legal minefield for the White House, as congressional inquiries unfold and calls mount for an independent criminal probe,” the experts said.

They warned other officials from the Trump campaign or White House could potentially be swept into the scandal, which has fed suspicions of Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his business ties with Russia and reports of Russian hackers’ leaking information that damaged Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2017