Top Democrats said following a classified briefing with Justice Department and FBI officials that there is “no evidence” of a spy in the 2016 Trump campaign — putting them at odds with President Trump.
“Nothing we heard today has changed our view that there is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign or otherwise failed to show appropriate procedures and protocols,” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement.
Schiff was allowed in both back-to-back meetings convened by the Justice Department on Thursday after his Republican counterpart in the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., demanded all documents relating to a confidential source.
The Justice Department had originally told Nunes that responding to the subpoena would put human lives as risk and possibly hurt national security.
[Devin Nunes: No more meetings with leaky DOJ until they cough up documents]
However, the confidential source has since been identified by media reports as Stefan Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor who made contact with three Trump campaign advisers. Halper also had contracts with the Defense Department for research.
But Trump has since alleged that a “spy” — which by definition is different than a confidential source — was sent to his campaign for political purposes.
In an attempt to diffuse the newest tensions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats met with the president at the White House earlier this week.
It was then announced White House chief of staff John Kelly would broker a meeting between Justice Department and FBI officials, where congressional leaders could ‘‘review highly classified and other information they have requested.”
The first meeting at the Justice Department included Rosenstein, Wray and Coats, as well as Nunes, Schiff, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.
The afternoon meeting on Capitol Hill also included Rosenstein, Wray and Coats, and the “Gang of Eight,” minus Ryan.
The “Gang of Eight” refers the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, and both parties’ leaders on the House and Senate Intelligence panels.
It is not immediately clear if the meetings were satisfactory to Nunes or Trump.
Ahead of the meetings, Ryan said the intelligence community had the “responsibility to ask tough questions of the executive branch.”
“I appreciate the Department arranging today’s briefing,” he said in a statement. “As always, I cannot and will not comment on a classified session. I look forward to the prompt completion of the intelligence committee’s oversight work in this area now that they are getting the cooperation necessary for them to complete their work while protecting sources and methods.”
Warner condemned the two separate briefings before and after they took place.
“The White House’s plan to provide a separate briefing for their political allies demonstrates that their interest is not in informing Congress, but in undermining an ongoing criminal investigation,” he said in a statement early Thursday, before telling reporters later in the day that the Justice Department meeting was “rogue.”
