Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the Department of Justice Russia investigation, is looking into whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials tell the Washington Post.
The committee's chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley, laid out his plan in a letter made public on Wednesday in response to requests from Democrats to investigate potential obstruction of justice surrounding Comey's dismissal by President Donald Trump last month, reports Politico news.
Trump has said he is "100 per cent" willing to testify under oath on Comey meetings and tell the FBI Special Consul Robert Muller that he never asked FBI to stop investigating.
The three names being mentioned in USA media are Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, and Richard Ledgett, until recently Mr Rogers' deputy. "We are not in a position to comment further".
"The FBI's leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal, " said Mark Corallo, spokesman for Trump's outside legal team.
Despite Sessions' statement about the reasons for his recusal, the attorney general did not actually step aside from the Russia probe until March 2, the day after The Washington Post reported on his two previously undisclosed meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
But don't forget, according to Comey's own testimony, Trump also said he would be happy to see the investigation go forward even if some "satellite" associates of his were shown to have done something wrong.
In Russia, meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin repeated a denial that Moscow interfered in the USA election - and made mocking remarks about former FBI Director James Comey during a nationally televised call-in show.
Steph Curry says he doesn't want to go to the White House
And at the end of the day, no matter what anybody says from now on, they can never take away from you being a champion ".
Trump has denied any collusion between himself or any of his associates and Russian Federation, and Putin has denied that Moscow sought to interfere in the election. But on the question of whether Trump fired Comey to obstruct justice, and whether the president orchestrated a cover story to hide that obstruction, the two men Trump enlisted are taking care not to vouch for his innocence. Still, he said: "Bob Mueller did a great job as Federal Bureau of Investigation director". But Comey did lay out facts that a prosecutor could use to try to prove obstruction, as NPR's Domenico Montanaro noted. "Nice", the president wrote on Twitter. Trump has suggested there might be tapes of his encounters with Comey; Comey said last week that "lordy" he hopes there are.
Questions have been raised about whether Trump sought their help in squelching the FBI investigation led by Comey, who was sacked by Trump last month.
Rosenstein said he would agree to dismiss Mueller only if there were a legitimate basis to do so, and an order from the president would not necessarily qualify. "And when asked I said that to the president".
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller on May 17, testified on Tuesday that he would not fire the special counsel without "good cause". But he said Tuesday he anticipated the conflict of interest and effectively recused himself on his first day on the job, and was never briefed on the Russian Federation investigation. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the same thing, declaring, "The FBI has revealed that the sitting president of the United States is under investigation". "I have confidence in Mr. Mueller", he said.
At last week's hearing, Comey suggested that he believed Trump was plausibly guilty of obstruction of justice. At the end of May, the chief of the Justice Department's Fraud Section, Andrew Weissman, also joined the team, NPR's Carrie Johnson reported at the time.
He met with the two top members of the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday to discuss preventing conflicts in their separate investigations into Russian election interference, and he's set to meet with House Intelligence panel leaders in coming days.
But, as the investigation widened, the president wanted something more from Comey than just his loyalty, which he didn't get.
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