Dem Congressman on Manafort: ‘He Colluded, He Colluded, He Colluded!’
While Donald Trump prepares to address the nation over his current government shutdown mess, the Russia investigation has broken back into the news, and has Democratic Congressman Denny Heck (D-WA) repeatedly proclaiming that Trump’s then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort “colluded” with Russia.
Rep. Heck, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, appeared on Tuesday night’s edition of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to discuss recent developments in the Trump/Russia scandal, including the news that Manafort shared polling data and had multiple other contacts with alleged Russian intelligence asset Konstantin Kilimnik.
Wolf Blitzer asked Heck “If [Manafort] gave sensitive internal Trump campaign polling data to this Russian who has ties to Russian intelligence, does that… rise to the level of collusion?”
“Absolutely,” Heck replied. “I don’t know why we’re still asking that question. This is a little bit akin to coming on a crime scene with a dead body and a bullet hole in it, and standing over it is Paul Manafort with a gun in his hand, and smoke still coming out of the barrel.”
“He colluded, he colluded, he colluded!” Heck said, adding that “the only questions left to be answered are, what did the president know and when did he know it?”
Heck went on to say that until the Mueller report is released, “we don’t know” the answers to those questions yet, but expressed strong suspicions of his own.
“Whether or not [Trump] was specifically aware of that particular exchange of information, it is becoming increasingly implausible that he was unaware of the depth and breadth of communication,” Heck said, pointing out that “there were 16 trump operatives that had contact with Russian operatives.”
Heck also said, of the current news, that “collusion has been demonstrated,” but that “Conspiracy has not yet been proven.”
Heck told Blitzer that he and his committee would like to “get our hands on the phone records of who it was that Donald Trump, Jr. talked to immediately prior to the Trump Tower meeting in the summer of 2016, to see whether that was his father.”
The Manafort news comes as Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has been indicted on unrelated obstruction of justice charges. Manafort and Veselnitskaya both attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016.
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
