Republicans watch their step in a slow retreat from Trump

Lawmakers have been grappling with revelations about Mr Trump's behaviour over Russia investigation

Republicans on Sunday inched away from President Trump amid mounting evidence that he may have sought to interfere in the federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In a sign of growing anxiety, several important Republicans expressed discomfort with Mr. Trump’s firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who had been leading the agency’s inquiry into whether Mr. Trump’s associates colluded with Russian officials. But the Republicans stopped short of explicitly criticizing Mr. Trump.

“If any president tries to impede an investigation — any president, no matter who it is — by interfering with the F.B.I., yes, that would be problematic,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It would be not just problematic. It would be, obviously, a potential obstruction of justice that people have to make a decision on.”

Mr. Rubio and other Republicans hewed to a line repeated often on Capitol Hill last week: that they need more information about Mr. Comey’s termination, particularly in light of a report by The New York Times that Mr. Trump told Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting that Mr. Comey was a “nut job” and that his firing had “taken off” the pressure on the president.

Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he hoped the report was not true, adding that Mr. Trump should have instead expressed any frustration over Russian meddling to that country’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.

“You would like, I would think, the president to kind of beat him over the head with the fact that, if they actually did interfere in any way, shape or form, how wrong that is and how outraged America is on both sides of the aisle,” Mr. Chaffetz said on ABC’s “This Week.”

While calling such disclosures to reporters “disgraceful,” Senator John McCain of Arizona said he was at a loss for how to explain Mr. Trump’s remarks.

“I don’t know how to read it, except that I’m almost speechless because I don’t know why someone would say something like that,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Lawmakers have been grappling with a flood of revelations about Mr. Trump’s behavior regarding the Russia investigation, including a report by The Times that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to stop the bureau’s investigation of Michael T. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, whose ties to Russia and Turkey are under scrutiny.

After the White House initially said that Mr. Trump had fired Mr. Comey on the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials, who cited his handling of the case into Hillary Clinton’s email server, Mr. Trump later contradicted that justification by saying that the Russia investigation had factored into his decision.

Mr. Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office on May 10 to Mr. Lavrov and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States — the day after Mr. Comey’s dismissal — may become central to the question of whether Mr. Trump tried to influence the Russia investigation. Some Democrats have accused the president of obstruction of justice.

Mr. McCain denounced the meeting with Mr. Lavrov, whom he called “the stooge of a thug and a murderer” — a reference to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

“He had no business in the Oval Office,” Mr. McCain said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump administration officials on Sunday continued to struggle to offer a consistent defense of the meeting. Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Flynn’s replacement as national security adviser, said that “the gist of the conversation was that the president feels as if he is hamstrung in his ability to work with Russia.”

The president mentioned Mr. Comey’s firing “in the context of explaining that he has been — feels as if he’s been unable to find areas of cooperation with Russia, even as he confronts them in key areas where they’re being disruptive,” General McMaster said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson took a different position, saying on “Fox News Sunday” that Mr. Trump had merely been trying to demonstrate to the Russian officials that he was “not going to be distracted by all these issues that are here at home.”

The president, Mr. Tillerson added, had wanted to show that the domestic turmoil would not “get in the way of the important work of engaging Russia to see what can be done to improve this relationship.”

Neither American official contested the account of Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. Comey. General McMaster and Mr. Tillerson were present for the Oval Office meeting, and at a White House news briefing on Tuesday, Mr. McMaster told reporters that “none of us felt in any way that that conversation was inappropriate.”

Lawmakers have called for more information about the meeting, during which Mr. Trump also revealed classified information gathered by Israeli intelligence officials — a revelation first reported by The Washington Post. And several congressional committees last week requested documents, recordings and other materials regarding conversations between Mr. Comey and Mr. Trump. On Friday, Mr. Comey agreed to testify at a later date before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, on Sunday released a subpoena he had drafted for documents related to the hiring and firing of Mr. Flynn. Mr. Cummings called on Mr. Chaffetz to sign it. Last month, White House officials declined to provide that information.

After a week of rapid-fire revelations related to the Russia investigation, Mr. Rubio, who challenged Mr. Trump during the Republican primary, said the president’s White House was not much different from the Trump campaign: full of drama.

“People got what they voted for,” Mr. Rubio said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

© 2017 The New York Times New Service