Senate intel leaders say House GOP leaked senator’s texts

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee 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 Russian-connected 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 they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., last month. They used the meeting to raise 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 text messages were leaked just days after the same House Republicans had taken the extraordinary step of publicly releasing, over the objections of the FBI, a widely disputed memorandum based on sensitive government secrets. Taken together, the actions suggested a pattern of partisanship and unilateral action by the once-bipartisan House panel.

Fox News published the text messages in early February. President Donald Trump and other Republicans loyal to him quickly jumped on the report to try to discredit Warner, suggesting the senator was acting surreptitiously to try to talk with the former British spy who assembled a dossier of salacious claims about connections between Trump, his associates and Russia.

The messages between Warner and Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer, show the senator tried for weeks to arrange a meeting with the former spy, Christopher Steele. 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.

The Fox News article made prominent mention of work by Waldman’s Washington lobbying firm on behalf of Oleg V. 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 he heard their complaints but noted he did not run the committee himself, the officials briefed on the encounter said.

In a joint statement, Burr and Warner acknowledged the meeting with Ryan and said they had not requested that the speaker take any specific action.