It is legacy-defining.”A member of the House intelligence committee and a co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine caucus, Fitzpatrick represents a suburban Philadelphia swing district.His comments amounted to some of the strongest criticism yet of Trump’s position on Russia and Ukraine from Republicans who have so far declined to leverage their majorities in the House and Senate to demand that he shift course.

On the first big foreign policy test of the GOP’s obeisance to Trump, some lawmakers are obliquely distancing themselves from Trump.

Congressional Republicans have mostly tempered their criticism or deferred to the president as he topples what were once their party’s core foreign policy principles.