Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is going on the attack against Democrats in a statement that argues they are making unfounded accusations about a confidential source behind his investigation of Huma Abedin, a longtime senior aide to Hillary Clinton.
Democrats have suggested the Iowa Republican is getting leaked information from a former staffer who now works at the State Department’s office of inspector general.
{mosads}In a blistering statement, Grassley argues a confidential source he’s used as part of the investigation is well-known to Democrats in the House and Senate and is not his former staffer.
He also takes issue with comments from staff for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) about “fishy” coincidences involving the former Grassley staffer, and argues Reid could find out about his source by talking to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Judiciary’s ranking member, or Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight panel.
“What’s ‘fishy’ is that the minority leader is engaging in vague implications rather than gathering the facts directly from his colleagues,” Grassley’s office said in a statement on Friday.
Both Cummings and Leahy, Grassley’s statement said, know who Grassley’s source is.
If Reid “wants to know where the information came from, there is no need for public speculation. He merely needs to speak to staff for Ranking Member Leahy or Ranking Member Cummings because their staff members were present for the meeting with the source. The source’s attorney was also present. The attorney happens to be a former staffer for Senator [Dianne] Feinstein.”
“So there’s no mystery,” the statement continues. “Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill know exactly where the initial information came from, and they also know that it was later corroborated by documents provided by the State Department itself.”
The Hill reported this week that Reid and Grassley have been fighting over Grassley’s investigation into Abedin, and his source.
Reid told Grassley during a phone call that he was “hearing that your staff is getting all of this [information]” about Abedin from Emilia DiSanto, the former Grassley staffer now at the State OIG, The Hill reported.
Separately, Adam Jentleson, Reid’s deputy chief of staff, told The New York Times that there was a “fishy pattern” between Grassley office getting the information and his former staffer working for the State Department OIG.
Grassley staffers and DiSanto stressed to The Hill in the story published this week that she is not the Iowa Republican’s “confidential source.”
Grassley is investigating Abedin’s work as a “special government employee” that allowed her to work both at the State Department and as an outside consultant. He’s also conducting a probe of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
The minority leader accused Grassley of using his investigations to try to bring down Clinton’s presidential campaign during a floor speech earlier this month.
“Why are nonpartisan public service positions being used as political pawns, especially if they are being blocked just because Senator Grassley doesn’t want Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States,” Reid said at the time.
Grassley, however, quickly fired back that his investigations involve “many things, but it does not involve politics.”
The Iowa Republican dropped his hold on foreign service officers earlier this week, though he added a hold on Thomas Shannon’s nomination to be the State Department’s under secretary for political affairs.
In a separate statement, Grassley said that his objection isn’t with Shannon but that “two and a half years have passed since I began my inquiry and the State Department has still not produced the materials I have requested or certified they do not exist.”