Richard Burr knows the truth about Ukraine. He shouldn’t have dodged it.

As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr tries to maintain the role of a low-profile, deeply informed overseer of U.S. intelligence agencies who monitors threats to U.S. security that transcend domestic politics. But every once in a while he reverts to being a Republican pol who puts his party before his country.

Now the North Carolina’s senior senator has made another switch from august chairman to water carrier for his Republican president. The Washington Post reports that Burr joined other Republican senators in giving support to President Trump’s debunked claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign in support of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“There’s no difference in the way Russia put their feet, early on, on the scale — being for one candidate and everybody called it meddling — and how the Ukrainian officials did it,” Burr said as he and other Republican senators spoke with reporters around their weekly lunch on Tuesday

That comment must have startled the Intelligence Committee’s vice chairmanr, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., since the committee’s investigation found that Russia alone engaged in a systematic effort to help the Trump campaign. Warner tweeted: “There is absolutely no factual basis for this Ukrainian election interference/CrowdStrike nonsense. None. Spreading this discredited conspiracy theory only serves to advance Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign against the United States.”

Discarding his tin foil hat, Burr later retreated from his comment, telling CNN: “I don’t think anybody interfered in the same way Russia did.” Though, deferring to Trump, he added that Ukraine played a role: “But it’s a legitimate argument that they interfered — that they were active.”

That “legitimate argument” is illegitimate according to Burr’s own committee. Politico reported on Monday that in the fall of 2017 the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated whether Ukraine played any role in the election “and found no evidence that Ukraine waged a top-down interference campaign akin to the Kremlin’s efforts to help Trump win in 2016.”

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, a member of the Intelligence Committee, emphatically described the lack of evidence in an interview with CNN on Tuesday: “I’ve sat through 25 hearings, briefings, meetings — probably more — on the question of what happened in 2016. In none of these meeting was there ever a hint, a breath, a suggestion, a word that somehow Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election in the interference or the influence campaign. It was Russia and it was Russia in a systematic, widespread way.”

Burr should have said exactly the same thing because he knows exactly the same thing. Instead he used his stature as the leader of a largely bipartisan probe into Russian election interference to give credence to Trump’s conspiracy theory, a theory Trump hopes will lift the cloud of Russian assistance during his 2016 campaign from his 2020 reelection effort.

This incident follows others where Burr has shown a partisan streak while in a role that requires bipartisan trust. In February 2017 The Washington Post reported that Burr had complied with a White House request that he speak with reporters to “counter news stories about Trump associates’ ties to Russia.” In April the report from special counsel Robert Mueller said Burr apparently briefed the White House about the status of the FBI probe into Russian election interference and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

It’s no surprise that Burr is supportive of Trump. He was the national security adviser to the Trump campaign. But at a time when other Republican senators are giving weight to claims that the nation’s intelligence agencies have found without merit, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman shouldn’t join in.

Trump brought this impeachment inquiry on himself. Let him defend himself. Burr’s role, if he can manage to stay in it, is to defend the United States.

This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Richard Burr knows the truth about Ukraine. He shouldn’t have dodged it.."