Setting the stage, Clinton expressed the hope that "we'll find out who he [Trump] is beholden to, "who pulls his strings".

Clinton added ominously: "I would love to see his phone records to see whether he was talking to Putin the day that the insurgents invaded our Capitol". She then asked Pelosi if the nation needs "a 9/11-type commission to investigate and report everything they can pull together."

Pelosi agreed on the need for such a commission, and proceeded to burnish her own anti-Putin credentials:

"As I said to him [Trump] in that picture with my blue suit … pointing rudely at him, 'With you Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin.'' Pelosi conceded that she does not know 'what Putin has on him politically, financially, or personally, but what happened last week was a gift to Putin."

Putin's Useful Idiots?