Republicans on House panel accused of leak
WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were behind the leak of private text messages between the Senate panel’s top Democrat and a Russianconnected lawyer, according to two congressional officials briefed on the matter.
Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat, were so perturbed by the leak that they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., last month. They raised broader concerns about the direction of the House Intelligence Committee under its chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the officials said.
To the senators, who are overseeing what is effectively the last bipartisan investigation on Capitol Hill into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the leak was a serious breach of protocol and a partisan attack by one intelligence committee against the other.
The messages between Warner and Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer, show that the senator tried for weeks to arrange a meeting with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who assembled a dossier of salacious claims about connections between President Donald Trump, his associates and Russia. The Senate committee has had difficulty making contact with Steele, whom it views as a key witness. And Waldman, who knew Steele, presented himself as a willing partner.
Fox News published the texts in early February. Trump and other Republicans loyal to him quickly jumped on the report to try to discredit Warner, suggesting that the senator was acting surreptitiously to try to talk with Steele.
The Fox News article made prominent mention of work by Waldman’s Washington lobbying firm on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate who was once close to Paul Manafort, Trump’s indicted former campaign chairman.
In his meeting with the senators, Ryan made clear that he heard their complaints but noted that he did not run the committee himself, the officials briefed on the encounter said.