Facing mounting bipartisan pressure, the White House said Thursday it would not allow Russian authorities to grill ex-US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and other Americans.
“It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it. Hopefully, President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The comment came amid growing bipartisan pressure, with the Senate passing a resolution opposing the plan advanced by Vladimir Putin at his Helsinki summit with Trump on Monday.
And it’s another reversal by the administration, after the president had called Putin’s idea an “incredible offer” on Monday.
“What he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer,” the commander-in-chief said.
The announcement came shortly before the Senate voted 98-0 to pass Sen. Chuck Schumer’s resolution opposing the idea of Russians questioning Americans.
Schumer said the vote was still needed because the White House statement was not firm enough.
“Let this resolution be a warning to the administration that Congress will not allow this to happen,” Schumer said on the Senate floor before the roll call.
“I call on President Trump to say once and for all, not through his spokespeople, that the lopsided, disgraceful trade he called an ‘incredible offer’ is now off the table.”
Putin told the commander-in-chief that members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team could come to Russia for observe authorities there question the 12 Russian spies he indicted last Friday.
In exchange, the Russian strongman wanted his own people to have a crack at anti-Kremlin businessman Bill Browder, McFaul and nine others.
The White House had said Wednesday that Trump and “his team” were still evaluating the offer — but Trump changed his tune a day later, with the administration saying the president “disagreed” with Putin’s suggestion.
A growing chorus of current and former officials and lawmakers had lashed out at the idea.
“It is outrageous that Russian prosecutors would seek to question a former US Ambassador. The White House should have immediately said they would never turn over a US Ambassador to the Russians,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a co-sponsor of the resolution.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also scoffed at the notion of Russian intelligence officers coming to the US to grill Americans.
“Under no circumstances should #Putin officials ever be allowed to come into the U.S. & ‘question’ Americans on their list. I don’t believe this will ever be allowed to happen which is why the @WhiteHouse should publicly & unequivocally rule it out,” he tweeted.
McFaul, meanwhile, said on “Morning Joe” Thursday that “this isn’t just about me — this is about American national interest. We can’t allow this kind of moral equivalency when dealing with Vladimir Putin.”
“Most shocking, and just lamentable, I think is my real reaction, when the White House was given the opportunity to categorically reject this moral equivalency between a legitimate indictment with lots of data and evidence to support it from Mr. Mueller with a crazy, cockamamie scheme with no relationship to facts and reality whatsoever, the White House refused to do that,” McFaul added.
