House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler insisted on Sunday that there was collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, despite the absence of indictments in regards to the allegations by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with host Dana Bash, Nadler, a Democrat from New York, pushed back against the assertion that Trump and his associates are innocent of conspiring with Moscow. Citing CNN’s own reporting, Bash pointed out that “no member of the Trump campaign was charged with conspiring with the Russian government to influence the election.” She then asked: “Do you accept that no member of the Trump team engaged in that kind of criminal conspiracy with Russia?”

Nadler said he still did not know. “First of all, we don’t know what indictments are forthcoming from other investigations that have been spun out by the special prosecutor to the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of Virginia,” he explained.

“Obviously, we know there was some collusion. We know the president’s son and campaign manager were involved in a meeting with the Russians to receive stolen — what they thought was to receive stolen information — information stolen by the Russians from the Democratic National Committee as part of the Russian government’s attempt to help Trump in the election,” he pointed out. “That’s the way the email inviting them to the meeting put it.”

Nadler also appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace to make similar claims. He argued that there are several examples of collusion “in plain sight.”

“The Justice Department believes that, as a matter of law, the president — no matter what the evidence — can not be indicted simply because he is the president,” he said. “If that is the case, then they can’t hold him accountable, the only institution that can hold a president accountable is Congress, and Congress therefore needs the evidence and the information.”

Congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and has repeatedly pointed to evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, made related points in an interview with ABC News This Week on Sunday as well.

“People should wait to determine just how incriminating it is,” Schiff said of Mueller’s report. “We know that the special counsel was not permitted to indict a sitting president, and we ought to see what evidence he produced both on the issue of conspiracy as well as on the issue of obstruction of justice,” he continued.

Mueller officially concluded his investigation on Friday, submitting his final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election to the Justice Department. Although Attorney General William Barr has promised to release as much of the report as he believes is legally allowed, it’s unclear how much — if any — of the document that will be. Democrats have strongly urged Barr to release the findings.

Although numerous close associates of the president were indicted, pleaded guilty and were convicted for a range of charges in Mueller’s probe, none were convicted of conspiring with Russia. However, several other investigations into Trump and his associates remain open, with many analysts pointing to probes by the Southern District of New York as a significant threat to the president.

Source: Jason Lemon, newsweek.com/collusion-trump-russia-nadler-mueller-1373358