Rosenstein meets with Ryan about Russia investigation

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray met with Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday about the House Russia investigation, a GOP aide confirmed.

Rosenstein, escorted by his security detail, walked by a number of reporters who were staking out budget negotiations between top White House officials and top congressional leaders.

The meeting in the Speaker’s office came at the request of Rosenstein and Wray, the aide said. 

“Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray asked to meet with the speaker and we accommodated the request,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email. “I’d refer you to their offices for anything further.”

No other information about the meeting and what was discussed was immediately made known.

The Wednesday meeting in the Capitol comes amid an intense feud between House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

For months, Nunes has lashed out at DOJ over what he argues is a deliberate failure to respond to requests for information on the so-called “Steele dossier.”

Nunes did not attend the meeting in Ryan’s office, a GOP aide said. 

The dossier — an unverified opposition research document into then-candidate Trump that alleges a constellation of contacts with Russia during the campaign — has become a flashpoint in the various investigations into Moscow’s attempt to swing the 2016 election.

A small but vocal group of GOP members have suggested that the FBI weaponized the dossier in order to launch a trumped-up investigation into Trump.

Nunes in August issued two identical subpoenas to the Justice Department and the FBI demanding that the agencies hand over information about the dossier and the bureau’s relationship to its author, a former British spy named Christopher Steele.

In the months since, he has threatened to hold Rosenstein and Wray in contempt of Congress. He has also threatened to drag Sessions and Wray before the committee for a public appearance “to explain under oath DOJ’s and FBI’s unwillingness or inability to comply in full with the subpoenas issued on August 24.”

Committee Democrats have pushed back against the subpoenas, saying that they were issued solely by the chairman and without first making the request voluntary in written form to agencies.

The House Intelligence committee is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, a probe that Nunes stepped back from leading in April due to an Ethics Committee investigation into whether he inappropriately disclosed classified information. 

Nunes did not completely recuse himself from the probe, however. Democrats have complained that he continued to exert influence behind closed doors despite the nominal leadership of Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), and he continued to pursue the investigation into the dossier.

The Ethics Committee ended its investigation of Nunes last month and cleared him of wrongdoing.

The meeting Wednesday came a few hours after Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller as well as the Justice Department and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who gave the order last year that launched the special counsel investigation.