Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, had a simple response to President Donald Trump’s allegations early on Saturday morning that his predecessor, Barack Obama, tapped his phones at Trump Tower during the election: “The president is in trouble.”
On Sunday morning, Schumer went on to expound on his comments, saying that the allegations would be damaging to his presidency and that whether or not the allegations were true, “the president makes it worse with these tweets.”
“If he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong. It’s beneath the dignity of the presidency … it shows this president doesn’t know how to conduct himself,” Schumer told “Meet the Press.” “If it’s true, it’s even worse for the president. Because that means that a federal judge, independently elected, has found probable cause that the president, or people on his staff … have probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent.”
Schumer also spoke about investigations into the Trump campaign’s Russian ties, putting his faith not in the attorney general’s office or in Congressional leadership but in Democrats holding Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr accountable.
“The faith I have in the intelligence committee is in [Intelligence Committee ranking member] Mark Warner and the Democrats. They’ve been holding Burr’s feet to the fire. And they have said they will look for another alternative if Chairman Burr doesn’t fully pursue this,” Schumer said. “If we have a special prosecutor, they will get to the bottom of all of this. And that’s what we need.”
