title:  COVER UP: Sean Spicer Asked CIA And Top Republicans To Bury Russia Reports For Trump
text: There needs to be an independent commission and special prosecutor put on this case now.Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Trump campaign officials were in contact with Russian intelligence during the election. Intelligence officials intercepted several communications between Trump s associates and Russian intelligence even as Trump was busy publicly urging Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton s emails.Infuriated by the report, Trump s chief-of-staff Reince Priebus got caught trying to get the FBI to shut it down. Now White House mouthpiece Sean Spicer just got caught enlisting the CIA Director and top Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to bury the reports.According to Axios,  Spicer personally picked up the phone and connected outside officials with reporters to try to discredit a New York Times article about Trump campaign aides  contact with Russia, then remained on the line for the brief conversations. The officials reached by Spicer were CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-N.C), according to a senior administration official. The reporters were from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the official said. Spicer provided reporters  phone numbers to House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who offered to make the calls himself, according to the official:  He was in and out of an event. Pompeo and Burr told the journalists that the Times story wasn t true but provided no details, frustrating the competing reporters, according to the official:  Both of them said: All I can tell you is the story is not accurate. This looks like a direct effort by Trump s White House to kill a report he doesn t like, which begs the question: Why is Trump so desperate to kill the reports about his ties to Russia?Trump s repeated attempts to do so smacks of a cover-up and he is using his partisan CIA Director and top Republicans to do it, the very Republicans who lead the committees that would be responsible for investigating Trump and his Russia ties.Now it s clear that Republicans in Congress can t be trusted to run such an investigation, and former CIA and Pentagon official George Little agrees. It s doubtful that Congress can conduct an objective and independent investigation into ties between this White House and the Russian government if it is collaborating so closely on media pushback with the White House press secretary,  he said.And that means an independent commission needs to be tasked with investigating Trump s ties to Russia and a special prosecutor should be appointed to oversee it.Because it is clear that Trump and his team are trying to hide something. There is something they don t want the American people discovering. We deserve to know the truth and by trying so hard to kill it, Trump is making this story even bigger and more important than ever.Featured Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images