Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray met with House Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday to discuss the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation.
The meeting occurred during a time of friction between the Justice Department and the committee over the investigation. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has been seeking testimony from top leadership at the FBI and Justice Department regarding the FBI’s involvement with a dossier, created by Fusion GPS that includes allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about President Donald Trump. Nunes, a California Republican, went so far as to threaten top officials at the department and the FBI with contempt of Congress in December if they did not meet his subpoena demands. The meeting was at Rosenstein’s request, an aide to Republican leadership tells CNN.
Rosenstein ignored reporters’ questions on his way out of the meeting.
The committee itself has also seen problems. Differences in conclusions split along party lines on the committee are making it increasingly likely that they will end up releasing two very different reports at the end of the investigation.
GOP leaders on the House panel are eager to wrap up the investigation soon, with influential Republicans saying the exhaustive review has dug through thousands of documents and interviewed virtually every major witness and has found scant evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives to meddle in the 2016 elections.
But Democrats on the committee say there have been several areas that have not been fully investigated, including financial records from the Trump Organization and key officials in Trump’s orbit, and that they are seriously weighing issuing their own report detailing what they view as the unexplored parts of the inquiry.