Don't Forget About the Other Russia Investigations

Another week means another round of questions about Russian interference for associates of the Trump campaign. Fox News reports that on Tuesday, former White House adviser Steve Bannon will testify before the House Intelligence committee. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is also expected to testify at an unspecified date this week. Meanwhile, CNN reports that longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks, who worked on the campaign from the very beginning and is now the White House communications director, could testify before the House committee as early as Friday.

It’s this last testimony that could be the most consequential—Hicks will be just the second sitting White House official, after Jared Kushner, to testify before the intelligence committee for its investigation into Russian interference. Hicks also recently met with investigators from the office of the special counsel headed by Robert Mueller. Last summer, Kushner also testified before the Senate Intelligence committee, which is conducting its own investigation.

It’s worth remembering that, for all the president’s caterwauling about the Mueller investigation, both houses of Congress—for now, controlled by the GOP—have their own investigations into Russian meddling. And like the special counsel with the guilty plea it extracted from former national security adviser Mike Flynn, the congressional investigations have penetrated the West Wing. What this all means remains to be seen—the three major investigations could exonerate Team Trump from wrongdoing regarding the 2016 election and even most process crimes (like what Flynn copped to, lying to the FBI). But until the investigations end, we just don’t know what we don’t know.

Mar-a-Lago Watch—From the Miami Herald on the so-called Winter White House:

Trump’s club, located on a beachfront property where the historic main house was built in the 1920s for cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, was cited Nov. 8 for two violations deemed high priority: the lack of smoke detectors capable of alerting the hearing impaired through flashing bright lights; and slabs of concrete missing from a staircase, exposing steel rebar that could cause someone to fall.

“High priority lodging violations are those which could pose a direct or significant threat to the public health, safety, or welfare,” the inspection code reads.