A hearing scheduled for Wednesday that was to examine Russian lobbying activities has been postponed.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced Tuesday afternoon the panel’s Wednesday morning hearing entitled “Oversight of the Justice Department’s (Non) Enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act: Lessons from the Obama Administration and Current Compliance Practices” has been postponed.
Taylor Foy, spokesman for Grassley, told the Washington Examiner in an email the hearing has been postponed as the senator and ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., “work together to schedule additional witnesses and seek relevant documents.”
One of the witnesses was William Browder of Hermitage Capital Management.
In 2008, Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky discovered a $230 million corruption scheme by numerous Russian officials. The Magnitsky Act was passed by Congress in response to this corruption scheme. One of the lawyers who worked hard to overturn the Magnitsky Act was Natala Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 claiming she had dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Glenn Simpson was also set to testify at Wednesday’s hearing. Simpson is the co-founder of Fusion GPS, an opposition firm that commissioned the so-called dossier on President Trump. However, Simpson said last week he would not be attending the hearing.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act is a federal law requiring agents of foreign governments to disclose their work.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Grassley’s office for comment on the reasoning behind postponing the hearing.
