Lankford on if They’re Done Looking into Trump Influencing Probe: ‘Far From It’

DICKERSON: "We turn now to Senate Intelligence Committee member James Lankford. He joins us from Oklahoma City.

"Good morning, Senator.

"I want to start with Director Comey’s testimony. Now that it is done, is the committee’s work in looking into whether the president tried to influence the investigation, is that done now?"

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R), OKLAHOMA: Oh, no, far from it. This is one interview of about 36 that we already have done.

"We are not complete yet. We have gone through thousands of pages of documents. If in any way we left the impression this was the culmination of our process, that would be incorrect.

"This is only the midpoint of it. We are trying to get all the facts out, both on Russia’s trying to interfere in our election, if any American tried to be able to reach back to them to be able to assist Russia in interfering in our election, and how classified documents got in the public sphere. So, we are still in the middle of that.

DICKERSON: And does that also — being in the middle of that also include looking into the president and what he may or may not have done with respect to the ongoing investigation?

LANKFORD: Sure. That is just part of the process.

Obviously, if there was any American, including the president, who tried to interfere in the election or to try to do an obstruction of justice, that would be very important to know.

Obviously, there is a criminal investigation that is ongoing with a special counsel. We have a unique policy role in it and an oversight role to make sure nothing is amiss. So, the special counsel and the FBI, we go through all the documents. We want to make sure they have seen everything, they have gone through everything, they’re doing their criminal work.

But we have a policy set of issues that we also have to go through. And we’re going to continue to work our way through everything.

DICKERSON: What do you make, now that it has been a few days, of former Director Comey’s testimony?

LANKFORD: It was surprising. A lot of people have asked me lately, even here in Oklahoma, did you learn anything from it? Was there things that were new?

And, yes, there certainly were things that were new, things like Director Comey stepping in and saying, yes, I leaked those documents to be able to get the information out of my memos, for him say the president did ask me about it three times, or he voluntarily, that is, said, you are not under investigation, the president of the United States.

Comey also made it very clear during his testimony multiple times that the president never asked him to stop the Russia investigation, that the comments about I wish you would let this go related to Michael Flynn, but never came up again. And no one from the White House ever brought it up again after that initial conversation February the 14th. So we are trying to evaluate what really happened, what is the background of it, what other information can we gain? We also obviously went into a classified session with Jim Comey to go into greater detail on the Russia part of it.

So what a lot of people saw was the open portion of it, was more of the palace intrigue of his firing and all that transition in the private meetings. But we have a lot deeper information to get to.