Democrats demanded an independent commission to dig into his firing of FBI Director James Comey, but Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan cautioned against “rushing to judgment.”

Ryan said Congress needs to get the facts, but “it is obvious there are some people out there who want to harm the president.” Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on a key House oversight panel, countered that Ryan and the Republicans had shown “zero, zero, zero appetite for any investigation of President Trump.”

The White House has denied reports that Trump pressed Comey to drop an investigation into Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. WASHINGTON — Besieged from all sides, the Trump administration relented and appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller Wednesday evening as a special counsel to oversee the federal investigation into allegations Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign collaborated to influence the 2016 presidential election. He accused the Republicans of taking great pains to ”do as little as humanly possible, just to claim that they’re doing something.“

Interest was hardly limited to the U.S. No less a commentator than Russia’s Vladimir Putin called the dramatic charges swirling around Trump evidence of “political schizophrenia spreading in the U.S.” He offered to furnish a “record” of the Trump-diplomats meeting in the Oval Office if the White House desired it. Questions about Trump’s conduct have been mounting for weeks, most recently with the two explosive revelations — that in February the president pressed Comey to drop a federal investigation into Flynn’s contacts with Russia and that he disclosed classified information to the senior Russian officials last week.’

Both allegations came from anonymous sources, and the White House was quick to denounce the leaks and deny any impropriety, insisting the president never tried to squelch the Flynn investigation nor did he make inappropriate disclosures to the Russians. Rep. Carlos Curbelo wrote on Twitter that “If recent allegations are true, they mark the beginning of a new and very sad chapter of scandal and controversy in our country.” House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told NBC News, “If the memo exists, I need to see it and I need to see it right away,” adding that the subpoena process is already underway. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that former FBI Director James Comey wrote a memo detailing how Trump had asked him in the Oval Office to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a request that came just one day after Trump ousted Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. The White House denied the report in a statement, saying it was “not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey.”

Flynn’s resignation came hours after it was reported that the Justice Department had warned the White House weeks earlier that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail for contacts with Kislyak before Trump took office on Jan. 20. After Tuesday’s revelation, the White House said in a statement, “While the President has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the President has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn.”

There is no sign the FBI’s Russia investigation is closing. According to the Times report, the conversation between Trump and Comey took place in the Oval Office on February 14—the day after Flynn resigned amid scandal following the Post’s report that the former general had misled White House officials, notably Vice President Mike Pence, about whether he discussed election-related sanctions against Moscow with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. On Friday, Trump seemingly leveled a threat against Comey when he wrote on Twitter, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” (According to the Times, Trump began his February 14 conversation with Comey by suggesting that the F.B.I.
The New York Times reports that a memo from James Comey, read in part to a reporter by a Comey associate, revealed that President Donald Trump asked him to end the F.B.I. investigation of Michael T. Flynn. The White House denies the version of events in the memo.