Angus King

I appreciate your testimony, and I appreciate your management of those great resources in Maine.

And that is when we get into these 10-, 12- and 20-year permitting processes which really do not serve any purpose, in my view.

I completely agree and we incorporated changes in our own law in Maine when I was there to do just this.

Senator King's Small Dam Exemption Act is an important initial step toward better acknowledging the value and importance of these resources.

Hydropower, I think, is often forgotten as one of America's most important energy sources and most important renewable energy sources.

We legislate around here for everybody.

So that would definitely be a place where you could pair that with a wind project?

S. 677 looks like a very sensible bill in terms of it providing a coordination of a one-stop shop.

I think this is a problem generally.

As I recall, most of your hydro is run-of-the-river though, isn't it, or do you have storage?

I intend to operate in a totally bipartisan--I should say since I am neither Democrat nor Republican--non-partisan way.

You never asked for a briefing or attended a briefing or read the intelligence reports?

I don't think Putin is a Republican or a Democrat. He's an opportunist.

I think that's very important for the American people to understand, that this is very much a forward-looking investigation in terms of how do we understand what they did and how do we prevent it.

Putin is not a Republican. He's an opportunist. He's not a Democrat.

For months the president has been dismissing the whole matter as a hoax and a fake and a witch-hunt, and those kinds of things.

I would have to say it's quite preliminary. I mean, we're interviewing witnesses.

Yes. We have unprecedented access to intelligence documents.

I think the point you're making is, if they had similar conversations about the investigation, as Mr. Comey reported, that certainly goes to buttress his position.

He has a great deal of credibility, as we've heard in this hearings.

This isn't somebody in a powerful position. This is the president of the United States in the Oval Office with you alone.

I think it's important to make this distinction. Our committee is looking at the facts of what happened and trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening again.

Well, my sense is, if he recused himself, he should have recused himself and not had anything to do with that decision.

We know from the public record, I mean, the president cited Jeff Sessions recommendation in his letter firing Comey.

Let's find out if there were tapes and if there were, let's have them.