Joshua Klein

FBI Director Comey confirms probe of possible coordination between Kremlin and Trump campaign

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-to-testify-on-russian-interference-in-the-presidential-election/2017/03/20/cdea86ca-0ce2-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fbidirector-750a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.c8df8751f77d

Summary: Ellen Nakashima, Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett wrote an article in the Washington Post that was posted this afternoon, March 20^th, that summarized the highlights of the testimony that FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Michael Rogers gave before the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.  During the hearing, FBI Director James B. Comey told the committee members that the FBI is investigating the efforts that the Russian government made to influence the US presidential election and any coordination that may have taken place between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.  In addition, Director Comey also told the committee members that the FBI had no information that would support President Trump’s claim that former President Obama tapped President Trump’s “wires” at Trump Tower during the presidential campaign last year. Director Comey stated that the FBI usually does not comment on active investigations “but in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest it may be appropriate to do so.” Representative Deven Nunes, the committee chairman, told Director Comey “there’s a big gray cloud that you’ve now put over people who have very important work to do to lead this country, and so the faster that you can get to the bottom of this, it’s going to be better for all Americans.” The authors also point out that the Republican members of the committee were focused on leaks of classified information that have been reported in the press that appear to be designed to hurt the Trump administration. For example, one committee member asked Director Comey about a Washington Post story that relied on classified information that had been leaked about President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The report disclosed that Flynn had discussed the subject of sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office.

Analysis: It is difficult to tell if this article is biased towards one side of the ideological divide. On the one hand, the authors appear to provide a straightforward summary of a major news item in the US Congress and US national news. However, the authors cite information about the Republican’s focus of the hearing later in the article. Thus, conservatives may make the argument that the article is slanted towards a liberal bias.