Marco Rubio zeroes in on Russia — not Obama

From WWW.POLITICO.COM

The new Senate Intelligence Committee chairman has no interest in fighting Trump's election-year battles.

Donald Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill are pushing aggressive new investigations targeting the president’s political opponents. Marco Rubio isn’t joining the fray.

As Rubio assumes the acting chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Florida Republican is distancing himself from a GOP-led probe targeting Hunter Biden. He has declined to embrace Trump’s “Obamagate” claims. And he is warning the Republicans spearheading the Biden investigation not to promote Russian disinformation in the process.

“I’m not going to accuse any member who believes that they are exercising oversight to be colluding with a foreign power,” Rubio said in an interview last week. “I will say to you that I think it’s pretty clear that the Russians are constantly pursuing narratives that they believe will drive conflict in our politics and divide us against each other.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee historically has been a bipartisan one, but Rubio is taking over at a time when partisan tensions in the Senate are perhaps higher than they have ever been, which may bring drawbacks to the influential perch.

Trump is actively encouraging Republicans to join his election-year revenge play against those who led investigations that ensnared him, his associates and his presidential campaign. Rubio, on the other hand, appears more concerned about Russian interference in the next presidential election — a sensitive subject for Trump, who bristles at any mention of Moscow swaying American elections.

It’s an approach that provides continuity with his predecessor Sen. Richard Burr (R-N. C.) but ultimately puts him on a collision course with Trump and his conservative allies, who are pushing for a forceful campaign against former senior Obama administration officials, including Joe Biden.

And unlike Burr, who plans to retire in 2022, Rubio still has political ambitions. He has expressed openness to another presidential run, and in the meantime is seeking to establish a legacy on foreign policy and national security issues. Running afoul of Trump or his base could undermine all that.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appointed Rubio as acting chairman of the Intelligence Committee after Burr temporarily relinquished the post amid an intensifying federal investigation into his stock transactions. McConnell said Rubio was the “natural choice,” a nod to his decade serving on the panel.

Rubio’s concerns about Russian disinformation echo those of Burr, who last year privately told GOP Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa that their corruption probe into Hunter Biden — the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s son — could aid the Kremlin’s efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system. POLITICO first reported Burr’s private warning.

“On that front, it’s important to remind everyone that [Vladimir] Putin is not a Republican or a Democrat,” Rubio said. “What he seeks more than anything else is to put us at each other’s throat. And nowadays that’s not a very hard thing to do.”

Rubio’s Republican counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has been hinting at “criminal referrals” for members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Rubio is steering clear of those and other efforts that Democrats — and privately, some Republicans — say could aid Russian intelligence.

When asked about such GOP initiatives, Rubio emphasized that his panel has jurisdiction over the activities of the intelligence community rather than the FBI or Justice Department. And he urged senators to be “wise” about the “ongoing threat” of election interference from Russia and other countries.

“If we hear or see something, I’ll encourage them to go read up on the intelligence they have access to,” Rubio said, adding, “Ultimately, we can’t control what people decide to believe or say.”

Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has been conducting an investigation into Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, and is exploring claims that a Democratic-aligned public-relations firm sought to leverage Hunter Biden’s role on the board to influence State Department policies under the Obama administration.

Democrats have said the investigation itself is a misuse of the Senate’s resources and simply designed to boost the president’s reelection prospects, pointing to Trump’s efforts to prop up the same allegations against Hunter Biden. Critics of the probe have also said it undermines U.S. national security by giving a boost to Russian intelligence and the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign to suggest that it was Ukraine, not Russia, intervening in U.S. affairs.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, commended Rubio for his skeptical posture toward those probes. Rubio and Warner have a close working relationship and have teamed up to tackle Russia’s influence in Europe, among other initiatives.

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