Rep. Bradley Byrne, Alabama Republican, said Tuesday he supports investigations into potential Russian meddling in future elections but added that probing President Trump’s 2016 campaign undermined those efforts.
“If they wanted to open an investigation in the summer of 2016 into what the Russians were doing, I’m glad they did it. I hope they’ll do it in the future if they have any indication if they are. I suspect that they will,” Mr. Byrne said on HillTV’s “Rising” program, an online video production of The Hill newspaper.
“But it’s another thing to go forward and say we’re going to investigate a presidential campaign. So it’s that next step that I think caused a lot of people to say ’wait a minute what’s going on here,’” he said.
Mr. Bryne introduced last week the Investigate the Investigators act, echoing calls by Mr. Trump an investigation into the beginnings of the Russia investigation and whether the president’s 2016 campaign was illegally spied on.
“When you see the email exchange between Strzok and Page, you know it was partisan. There’s no question it was partisan. So, unfortunately, we’ve got to make sure we have accountability in that system,” he said.
Mr. Bryne is running to unseat Democratic incumbent Doug Jones from his Senate seat in 2020.
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