Appearing on Real Time With Bill Maher Friday evening, Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he believes a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the Trump administration’s ties to Russia and Russian influence on the 2016 election.

Maher asked Issa if he would have “let it slide” had the Russians hacked the campaign of Mitt Romney in 2012 and the Obama team had been in talks with the Russians or any other foreign government regarding influencing the election. To that, Issa replied:

“No.”

That’s when Maher told Issa:

“We need an independent prosecutor. And Jeff Sessions should recuse himself, the same way Loretta Lynch recused herself, because he was a part of the Trump campaign, is that correct?”

Issa made his agreement clear:

“You’re right that you cannot have somebody, a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions, who was on the campaign and who was an appointee. You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute and office.”

The California Republican added:

“Here’s the reason we’re going to have to do it, Bill. There may or may not be fault, but the American people are beginning to understand that Putin murders his enemies sometimes right in front of the Kremlin…he’s murdered people and taken down using cyber warfare in Georgia and Ukraine.

“This is a bad guy who murders people. Who runs a gas station with an economy the size of Italy but is screwing up things all over the world, that we’ve been, quote, ‘working with.’

“Now, we have to work with them. We don’t have to trust them. And we need to investigate their activities, and we need to do it because they are bad people.”

It remains to be seen if Congressional leaders, especially Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, have the stones to publicly agree with Issa.

Here’s Darrell Issa on Real Time:

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org