Maine's independent Sen. Angus King appeared on CNN this morning with Brooke Baldwin and pushed back strongly against the idea put forth by Rep. Sean Duffy that the Senate Intelligence committee is some kind of "witch hunt."
"Knowing what the president said, calling the Russian investigation a witch hunt, telling anchors he believes it will hurt the country. How do you see it?" she asked.
King took visible umbrage.
"Well, you got to back up and say, you know, how did we get here?" he said.
"We had an democracy by a foreign government that was sophisticated, directed from the very top, that reached all the way from state registration, voter registration rolls through hacking, releasing of documents, people purposely planting false stories in the news.
"This was an attack on our democracy and that's the reality," he said. "And we've got to look into it. You can call it a witch hunt, I call it my duty. I didn't go to congress to be reading intelligence cables and poring over history of who talked to who when, but we can't turn a blind eye to what happened, and we've got to get to the bottom of the facts.
"And I think that's what this is all about. it's not a witch hunt," he said. "I can tell you right now i am not going to participate in a witch hunt, and if the facts demonstrate what President Trump said, that there was no collusion, no interaction between his campaign and the Russians during the period of the summer of 2016, I'll sign the report.
"But right now we don't know that, and we have a duty to dig into it."
