REUTERS/Aaron Bernstein
The Senate Intelligence Committee found that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were responsible for leaking text messages to Fox News between Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and a Washington lawyer with Russian connections. Fox News wrote in a report that the lawyer, Adam Waldman, had previously worked with a Russian aluminum magnate, and that Warner had been texting him on an encrypted messaging app, asking for contact with the author of the Trump dossier, Christopher Steele, whom the Senate committee considers “a key witness.” Warner and the top Republican on Senate Intel, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), summoned a meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan in February to report their findings. The senators were "perturbed" by the discovery and raised concerns about House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), according to The New York Times. During the last bipartisan investigation into 2016 Russian interference, Republicans from House Intel were willing to leak the classified Warner texts and release the controversial “Nunes memo,” seemingly in the name of taking jabs at the other side of the aisle.