--- title: Donald Trump: Lindsey Grahm Wants to Look for Russia Links description: The Republican senator said he wants to examine fellow Republican President Donald Trump's business dealings for any ties to Russia canonical: https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-05-09T17:42:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-08T09:01:37.533Z article:section: Politics og:title: Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Ties to Russia og:description: The Republican senator wants to check out Trump's business dealings og:url: https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltda80a28b11dff99a/6988cc7b97cdff4c096b09c0/lindsey-graham-russia-hearing.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Holds Hearing On Russia Interference In The 2016 Election og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Ties to Russia twitter:description: The Republican senator wants to check out Trump's business dealings twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltda80a28b11dff99a/6988cc7b97cdff4c096b09c0/lindsey-graham-russia-hearing.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Business Dealings for Ties to Russia > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=7798be56-b0c6-427f-ba16-88a563d780b2&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Business Dealings for Ties to Russia [Watch (HLS stream): Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Business Dealings for Ties to Russia](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Sri2UitB.m3u8) (1:13)  _Published 2017-05-09. U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he wants to examine fellow Republican President Donald Trump's business dealings for any ties to Russia, CNN reported on Tuesday, one day after the issue was raised at a Senate hearing._ by [Reuters](https://time.com/author/reuters/) ## Reuters May 9, 2017 5:42 PM UTC by [Reuters](https://time.com/author/reuters/) ## Reuters May 9, 2017 5:42 PM UTC U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he wants to examine fellow Republican President Donald Trump’s business dealings for any ties to Russia, CNN reported on Tuesday, one day after the issue was raised at a Senate hearing. Graham said it would be helpful to see Trump’s tax records but that it was too soon to say whether he would be willing to subpoena them, according to CNN. Representatives for Graham could not be immediately reached to confirm the report or give more details. Representatives for the White House also could not be immediately reached. Graham asked former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Monday whether he had concerns about Russian ties to Trump’s business interests. Clapper said he could not comment because the issue could be a subject of an ongoing investigation. Graham on Tuesday said he intended to look into Trump’s business ties to see whether any connections exist between Russia and the Trump campaign or the president’s associates and would monitor the FBI’s investigation to see how it could affect a Senate probe. ## Transcript I wanna know about what Clapper said. I wanna know more about Trump's business dealings. And I asked Clapper, I said, is there any business dealings with the Trump Organization that gave you concern? Then he said no, with a caveat, I don't know what the FBI's looking at so I don't wanna run afoul of them. Do you think the Russians funded any of these Trump golf courses? I don't know. This is hopefully people are looking at that kind of stuff. And it's not wrong to do business with Russians. There's no crime in that, but the Trump people said they never did business with Russians. So all I know is, I want to know everything about what happened in 2016 between the Russian government, the Trump campaign, And don't conflate the two. The Russians tried to undermine our election. That's different than colluding with the Trump campaign. Do you think his tax returns would be helpful in determining the business interest aspect? Could be down the road, but the one thing I think the President misunderstands is that the Russians did interfere with our campaign. I don't think they changed the outcome, but that's different than you working with the Russians. I wish you would embrace the fact that the Russians interfered in our election, and he's gonna stop them in the future. That should be where he, that's the moral high ground for him. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/"},"headline":"Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Business Dealings for Ties to Russia","datePublished":"2017-05-09T17:42:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-08T09:01:37.533Z","description":"His comments came one day after the issue was raised at a Senate hearing","url":"https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/","keywords":["White House","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltda80a28b11dff99a/6988cc7b97cdff4c096b09c0/lindsey-graham-russia-hearing.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Reuters","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/reuters/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltda80a28b11dff99a/6988cc7b97cdff4c096b09c0/lindsey-graham-russia-hearing.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Holds Hearing On Russia Interference In The 2016 Election","caption":"Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Holds Hearing On Russia Interference In The 2016 Election","creditText":"Andrew Harrer—Bloomberg/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/","name":"Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Business Dealings for Ties to Russia"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Lindsey Graham Wants to Investigate President Trump's Business Dealings for Ties to Russia","description":"U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he wants to examine fellow Republican President Donald Trump's business dealings for any ties to Russia, CNN reported on Tuesday, one day after the issue was raised at a Senate hearing.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Sri2UitB/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2017-05-09T18:30:28.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Sri2UitB.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/","duration":"PT1M13S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4772661/lindsey-graham-president-donald-trump-russia-investigation/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```