The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee allege that leaked messages between one of them and a lawyer claiming to have connections with Christopher Steele came from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee it was reported today.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Ranking Member, Democrat Mark Warner were so dismayed by the finding that they requested a meeting with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to register their complaint with him. They used the opportunity to also raise deeper concerns about the increasingly hostile relations between Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, as well as about the general direction the Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, is taking its investigation.
The Senators say the leak of the information was a breach of protocol and represented what amounts to a partisan attack by one intelligence committee on another.
The messages show Senator Warner interacting with Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer, who tried to broker a meeting between Warner and Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled a report alleging that the Russian government and the Trump campaign actively coordinated efforts to give the trump campaign an advantage in the 2016 election.
According to Waldman, Steele had a desire to meet with congressional investigators but wanted the request to come in the form of a bipartisan letter from the Committee signed by both Warner and Burr. Something Warner was reluctant to do because, as he said, they didn’t want to leave a paper trail.
“We want to do this right private in London don’t want to send letter yet cuz if we can’t get agreement wud rather not have paper trail,” Warner wrote in March of last year.
“That makes sense. Glad to keep trying to intermediate and see if I can convince him to speak w you directly. At the moment he seems spooked. No pun intended,” Waldman replies.
The messages go on for weeks, but the two are seemingly unable to break the impasse over the conditions for a possible meeting. Christopher Steele has yet to meet with lawmakers according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Copies of the messages were originally submitted to the Senate Committee in January by Waldman. Shortly after, one of Rep. Nunes’ staff members requested that copies be shared with the House committee as well. Days later, Fox News printed the messages and said they were obtained from a Republican source although they did not name them.
The leaks, according to the Senators, are one incident in a larger pattern of increasing partisanship by the House Committee. The text messages were leaked just days after Nunes’ committee released their controversial memo outlining alleged abuses by the FBI in obtaining FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
Congressman Nunes’ office has denied the allegations, calling them “absurd.”
Burr and Warner have sought to differentiate the way the House Committee is conducting its investigation from the way the Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting its. They issue joint statements and make joint appearances at press conferences, whenever possible. They also take great pains, unlike their House counterparts, to keep their investigation under wraps.
“I promised you when we started a year ago that the sensitive nature of that material would, in fact, be protected,” Burr said to the heads of the nation’s intelligence agencies during a hearing last month. “The vice chairman and I have done everything in our power to do that.”