Chuck Todd Grills Conaway on House Intel Probe: How Can You Definitively Say No Collusion?

Chuck Todd confronted top House Intel Committee Republican Mike Conaway on the committee’s Russia probe ending when there are still loose ends to tie up.

They first addressed Andrew McCabe, who testified before the committee. Todd asked Conaway if he felt McCabe was forthcoming. Conaway said, “To the extent that we knew it. But if that proves to be incorrect then that was a bad judgment on my part.”

Todd directly asked, “Did he back up Comey’s contention that he was fired because of the Russia probe?”

Conaway responded, “It’s been a while since I sat through that, that testimony. I haven’t had read it recently. We were focused not so much on that as the––because that feeds into the collusion issue. And, and our committee doesn’t––was not charged with answering the collusion idea. So we really weren’t focused on that direction.”

As for the committee’s Russia probe ending, Todd brought up the reversal last week about whether they believe Russia was trying to help President Trump or not.

He asked Conaway why Devin Nunes is claiming no collusion when they “didn’t even investigate this aspect of it.”

“If you didn’t interview George Papadopoulos,” Todd said, “somebody who apparently is the person that triggered the investigation because he was bragging about potential access to damaging information on Hillary Clinton––if you didn’t interview him, just that one, and there’s other people you didn’t interview, how can you draw this conclusion definitively?”

Conaway said, “He got outside the opportunity for us to interview him when he was charged and caught up in the Mueller investigation.”

He also talked about Papadopoulos’ “braggadociousness” and said, “He was not somebody that seemed to be a player… in the long-term.”

Todd asked, “Do you now regret trying to draw a conclusion about collusion?”

“No,” Conaway said. “Well, we haven’t drawn that. What we said, Todd, excuse me, Chuck, is that we found no evidence of it.”

Watch above, via NBC.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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