Sen. Warner: Plenty of Evidence of Trump Campaign/Russia Collusion

Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) told NBC's Meet the Press that he thinks there is "enormous amounts of evidence" of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, though that appeared to be based on the "litany of information" that was already public.

Warner was not commenting on what may have been revealed in nine hours of private testimony with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen before his committee last week. But Warner said "what you do with that evidence and where it leads," he is reserving judgment on.

Not surprisingly, that collusion assertion was the lead on Meet the Press' e-mail to reporters Sunday afternoon (March 3).

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That litany of evidence included ongoing negotiations about Trump tower "well into the campaign," the "fact" that the President knew about the "dump of the Wikileaks material," the President's campaign manager sharing polling information with the Russians, and more. "To me, that's all evidence. Where that evidence leads in terms of conclusions," I'm going to reserve judgment."

Warner was responding to a video clip of Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C) saying that there was no "factual evidence" of collusion.

Asked if it was still circumstantial evidence of collusion, Warner appeared to take a little off the "collusion" assertion, saying that there was no one who could say there was not plenty of "factual evidence" of collaboration and communication between the two.

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Asked why Warner thought Cohen was telling the truth, Warner conceded he has not been truthful in the past and they were getting additional documents to help prove or disprove his statements, but also said that the President doesn't have a great track record on veracity, either.

Warner said he had never seen in his lifetime a presidential campaign have that much outreach to Russia, a country that intervened massively in an election on behalf of Trump. But he said he had reserved his final judgment on whether he thought it was enough to oust the President from office.

On Sunday, President Trump tweeted: "The hostile Cohen testimony, given by a liar to reduce his prison time, proved no Collusion! His just written book manuscript showed what he.....said was a total lie, but Fake Media won’t show it."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.