Still no briefing for Senate intel panel on Mueller report: sources

[June 06, 2019]    By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only committee of the U.S. Congress running a genuinely bipartisan probe of Russian meddling in U.S. politics has still had no word from the Trump administration on briefing the panel about the Mueller report's counterintelligence findings, congressional sources said on Wednesday.

The Mueller Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election is pictured in New York, New York, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election produced counterintelligence reports, which were sent to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.

Since the mid-April release of the redacted report, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been stonewalled in much the same way the administration has refused to cooperate with other committees, two congressional sources said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Mark Warner, had hoped that the Justice Department would provide it with private briefings on those materials.

The committee is "not satisfied" with the Justice Department's stonewalling and "will press ahead with its effort to obtain" the Mueller material, one of the two sources said.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

On Tuesday, House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said his panel plans hearings on the Mueller report, including counterintelligence (CI) issues.

As an example of the questions that his panel has about the report, Schiff said: "What does it mean when Mueller in his report says that there were CI agents embedded in his team sending reports back to headquarters?"

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and G Crosse)

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