House Intel's Mike Conaway previews Russia recommendations

• Conaway, who even resisted a Mar-a-Lago trip, told us: "[T]he team got back to the White House and explained why it was I could not take any calls from the president. And that's hard, because I [took calls] from President Obama."
• "I have had no conversations, personal, phone, messaging systems with the president this entire time frame because ... I thought the other side would try to make more out of that than I could explain."
• "[Y]our name pops up on TV, he wants to call you, he's going to call you. ... I have no idea what he wanted to talk about."

Conaway said he was disappointed "that we weren't able to conduct the investigation a little quieter, with less public fanfare."

• "I'm embarrassed on behalf of our committee that we're such a sieve that we can't keep a secret. It's both sides."

Conaway said the GOP's coming recommendations include:

• Setting up a notification system that allows the Department of Homeland Security, when a threat to a state election system is detected, "to immediately hit the right person" in the state to communicate the information.
• "A little more fulsome" reporting to the Federal Election Commission, so that if "you've got your private entity paying a foreign agent to do something, ... making sure that we've got the right kind of disclosures."
• Additional voter registration security.