Democrats on House Intel Committee flex their newfound Trump-Russia muscles

| 7:03 pm EDT March 20, 2018
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Now that the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have released a report falsely exonerating Donald Trump and all of his associates in the Trump-Russia scandal, it means the Democrats on the committee are more or less free to run their own Trump-Russia investigation as they see fit. They’ve quickly landed a key cooperating witness who just got done blowing the whistle on how the Trump campaign was cheating in the 2016 election.

The Democrats on the House Intel Committee are led by ranking member Adam Schiff, and flanked by other rising stars along the lines of Eric Swalwell and Jackie Speier. Over the past week Trump campaign data firm Cambridge Analytica has found itself at the center of the Trump-Russia scandal, after Facebook announced that the firm had stolen user data from fifty million Facebook users, and Cambridge Analytica execs were caught on camera discussing cheating methods involving bribery and blackmail.

Now one of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblowers, Christopher Wylie, is making a bee line for the Democrats on the House Intel Committee, according to a new Washington Post report (link). This represents a major shift in the balance of power among the various congressional committees investigating Trump-Russia, as Wylie is bypassing the bipartisan probes being run by the Senate Intel and Judiciary Committees, in favor of talking only to Democrats.

So where does this leave us? Special Counsel Robert Mueller is still running the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. It’s long been widely reported that Mueller is already investigating Cambridge Analytica, and he’ll surely talk with Wylie if he hasn’t already. But when it comes to the public-facing congressional Trump-Russia investigations, this is a sign that the Democrats on the House Intel Committee are seizing power. The Republicans on the committee may end up regretting having excluded the Democrats from their own investigation, as it’s set the Democrats free to run a vigorous probe of their own.