Warner said Thursday that going forward, political campaigns should be legally required to report any outreach from a foreign power to U.S. law enforcement.
“All that kind of activity, Mueller may have concluded may not be illegal, but it’s wrong,” Warner said. “Any legitimate campaign should have known that when you’re contacted by a foreign agent, particularly from a power that has historically been an adversarial power, there ought to be an affirmative obligation to report that to the FBI.”
Warner later said it “should have been” illegal for the Trump campaign not to report the Russian outreach to the FBI.
“There ought to be an affirmative obligation to report it to law enforcement,” he said.
Warner said the committee is looking to speak to Mueller and review his report’s underlying counterintelligence information before concluding its probe. Burr has projected it will wrap up in the coming months, though the committee still needs to interview more witnesses and write its final report.
Warner said Mueller’s report raised questions for him, noting that the dossier containing salacious and unverified allegations about Trump and Russia was barely mentioned.
“I got the same question — why didn’t Mueller finish?” Warner said. “The controversy around the Steele dossier — it was glancingly mentioned at best.”