| For everyone alarmed by Donald Trump’s rise, James Comey and Senator John McCain — two Republicans who hate being seen as partisans — were deeply disappointing figures in 2016. |
| The details of both stories are familiar by now. Comey is the F.B.I. director who made the dubious decision to focus national attention on Hillary Clinton’s email server just 11 days before the election. McCain is the once-maverick senator who, despite being personally maligned by Trump, rallied to his side in the campaign. |
| And both Comey and McCain have emerged as central players in the emerging Russia scandal. |
| In an Op-Ed, the journalist Tim Weiner calls them the two people who have “the power and the will” to compel testimony from Michael Flynn, Trump’s deposed adviser, over his Russian contacts and Trump’s. |
| Comey is in this role because an F.B.I. investigation of Flynn helped cause his downfall and the investigation has reason to continue. McCain is in the role because he is “a Cold Warrior who dislikes the idea of cozying up to the Kremlin and is preparing for hearings on Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election,” Weiner writes. |
| Comey and McCain obviously aren’t the only people with the power to investigate the extent of the collaboration between Russia and Team Trump. Other Republicans, including Senate leaders and committee chairmen, have that power, as well. Like Comey and McCain, they now face another character test. |
| A foreign country, and not a friendly one, appears to have accumulated undue influence at the highest levels of American government. Because Republicans control both houses of Congress, only they really have the power to address the situation, which is as alarming as any political situation in a long time. |
| Will they be willing to do so? For more, Charles Blow, Nick Kristof and the Editorial Board all write about Russia today. |
| The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Melissa Blake on Trump’s disrespect for the disabled and Eric Posner on the problems with the immigration ruling that went against Trump. |
| David Leonhardt |
| Op-Ed Columnist |
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