Russia probe: Investigators, Trump staff turn to Facebook for answers

With the probe into Russia taking a lukewarm pace, investigators are turning their gaze on Facebook, with the belief that the social media giant holds the answers on whether President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Moscow.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who met with Facebook officials in California more than a month ago as part of his committee's investigation into potential collusion, is convinced the company can explain whether anyone from the Trump campaign helped Russians boost fake news articles targeting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

"If the Russians know, how are the Russians smart enough to target in areas where the Democrats weren't knowledgeable enough? I don't feel like I have run that to ground yet," Warner told CNN.

"There are two questions. One is: Was there coordination or collusion between the campaigns and these technology tools, which overwhelmed the search engine tools so that certain stories popped up at the top of your newsfeed. The second is, on a broader basis going forward: How do we prevent this from happening again?" Warner added.

Trump's digital staff strongly believes that the only way for them to have their names cleared, is for Facebook to testify.

But this might not be so easy, as Facebook has previously fended off

"We've been in touch with a number of government officials, including Sen. Warner, who are looking into the 2016 US Presidential election. We will continue to cooperate with officials as their investigations continue. As we have said, we have seen no evidence that Russian actors bought ads on Facebook in connection with the election," a Facebook spokesman told CNN.