WASHINGTON — Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice said Tuesday that she “absolutely” never sought to uncover “for political purposes” the names of Trump campaign or transition officials concealed in intelligence intercepts, and she called suggestions that she leaked those identities “completely false.”
“I leaked nothing, to nobody, and never have and never would,” Rice said in response to the latest charges and countercharges flowing from politically charged investigations into Russian interference in the presidential election.
Since they were first reported over the weekend, the Rice reports have overtaken the steady drumbeat of revelations about connections to Moscow that have dogged President Trump for months. On Tuesday, the subject dominated cable news and flooded Twitter.
“Rice ordered spy docs on Trump?” the president retweeted, with a link to the Daily Caller and a Drudge Report headlined “Boiled Rice.”
A number of Republican lawmakers said that Rice should testify before congressional inquiries into what U.S. intelligence has said were Russian efforts to roil the presidential race.
“If the reports are right, then she will be of interest to us,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, along with its House counterpart and the FBI, is investigating the matter.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the attention focused on Rice a diversionary tactic. He has also called on the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, a Trump transition official and fellow Californian, to recuse himself from the investigation.
Asked Tuesday whether she was willing to testify, Rice told MSNBC, “Let’s see what comes.” Investigations on “Russian involvement in our electoral process are very important … and every American ought to have an interest in those investigations going wherever the evidence indicates they should,” she said. “I would want to be helpful in that process if I could,” she added.
The focus on Rice comes as lawmakers are trying to iron out why Nunes went to the White House two weeks ago to view documents that he later said suggested that the names of Trump transition team members had been improperly “unmasked.”
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