Senate Intel leaders suspect GOP leak of texts

Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee suspect House Republicans leaked to conservative media text messages between the panel’s top Democrat and a lobbyist he hoped could connect him with the author of a dossier alleging President Donald Trump has ties to Russian officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner, D-Va., recently raised with Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., their concerns about what appear to be leaks fromthe House Intelligence Commitee, these people said. Ryan’s spokeswoman, Ash Lee Strong, said the speaker “heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts.”

A spokesman for Rep. Devin Nunes, R-N.C., who chairs the House Intelligence panel, did not respond to a request for comment. Burr would say only that “the vice chairman and I updated the speaker on our investigation and that was the extent of it.” He denied that the Senate panel had concluded who was behind the leak and declined to provide further details about the conversation.

Warner and the lobbyist, Adam Waldman, exchanged messages about a year ago. In them, Warner requested help arranging a meeting with Christopher Steele, a British ex-spy who compiled the dossier, a controversial document financed by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Their exchange became the subject of a Fox News report published in February. The report indicated that Fox News obtained the texts from an unidentified Republican Party member.

The leak accusation is the latest manifestation of a bitter partisan feud that has consumed the congressional investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.

According to one official on Capitol Hill, it is clear the House Intelligence Committee leaked the text messages because the version of them published by Fox News did not contain the same page markings appearing on documents Waldman provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee.