Scams reaching 'Watergate scale'

Republican Sen. John McCain invoked the biggest scandal in modern political US history on Tuesday when finding a comparison for recent reports about President Donald Trump.

"We've seen this movie before. It's reaching Watergate size and scale," McCain said at a dinner for the International Republican Institute. "This is not good for the country."

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump in February had asked James Comey, then the FBI director, to end the FBI's investigation into national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump unexpectedly fired Comey last week, in a move Trump acknowledged making at least in part because of Comey's handling of the FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.

"I've known this guy (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov for 30 years, he's an old KGB apparatchik stooge, and Putin is a murderer and a thug," McCain was quoted as saying by the Daily Beast.

"And to have Lavrov in the Oval Office and be friendly with the guy whose boss... sent aircraft with precision weapons to attack hospitals in Aleppo, I just think it's unacceptable," said McCain.

Several other Republican lawmakers too expressed concerns over the developments inside the White House.

Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the US in the 1970s, which ended in resignation of the then president Richard Nixon.