WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department agreed to show congressional Republicans "highly classified" information they have demanded from the Russia probe, the White House said after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray met Monday with President Donald Trump.
The department also agreed to ask its official watchdog to look into "any irregularities" in its investigation of Trump's campaign, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
The outcome of the meeting averted a potential showdown after Trump demanded in a tweet Sunday that Justice investigate whether the FBI had an informant inside his 2016 presidential campaign.
"Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's or the Department of Justice's tactics concerning the Trump campaign," Sanders said.
She said the men also agreed that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly would set up a meeting for congressional leaders to review "highly classified and other information they have requested" from the Justice Department's probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Justice Department leaders have fought vigorously against revealing to Congress materials on the source. It was not clear whether they had backed down from their position and would now allow GOP leaders to look at the documents, or whether there would simply be a follow-up meeting for more discussion.
The source at issue is Stefan Halper, a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and an emeritus professor at Cambridge University in England, according to multiple people familiar with his role.
In the summer and fall of 2016, Halper, then an emeritus professor at Cambridge, contacted three Trump campaign advisers for brief talks and meetings that largely centered on foreign policy, The Washington Post reported last week.
At some point that year, he began working as a secret informant for the FBI as it investigated Russia's interference in the campaign, according to multiple people familiar with his activities.
It was also not clear which lawmakers would be invited to review the information.
Some Republican lawmakers have demanded sensitive internal documents they say will show the investigation into Russian meddling and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it was tainted by improper actions long before the appointment a year ago of special counsel Robert Mueller.
There was no accord on what would be handed over, according to one person familiar with the meeting. Rosenstein is going to work with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to see what -- if anything -- can be handed over or declassified, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing the closed session.
Coats also participated in Monday's White House meeting, according to two U.S. officials. He will be part of the meeting Kelly will convene as well, Sanders said.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a close Trump ally who has been critical of the Justice Department for not turning over documents to Congress, said he was glad to hear that Justice officials seemed willing to share more material about how they opened the investigation into contacts between some in the Trump campaign and Russians.
"It's a good day for transparency, and I appreciate the president's leadership," Meadows said.
"Obviously, the details of the cooperation that is a result of this meeting today will be a defining moment for the Department of Justice. We can certainly applaud the progress and efforts that were made today."
Meadows said he was interested to see which lawmakers would be invited to attend.
"If it includes critical members of the House Intelligence Committee, it will go a long way to answering these unanswered questions," he said.
"Rosenstein is an honorable guy, and I can't imagine he'd go along with something as inappropriate as investigating someone at the behest of the president," said Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican who's a frequent Trump critic.
Rosenstein declined to answer questions from reporters upon his return from the White House.
The Justice Department probe began in March at the request of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and congressional Republicans. Sessions and the lawmakers urged Inspector General Michael Horowitz to review whether FBI and Justice Department officials abused their surveillance powers by using information compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy, and paid for by Democrats to justify monitoring Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to Trump.
Horowitz said his office will look at those claims as well as communications between Steele and Justice and FBI officials.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, said in a tweet on Sunday that the president's "claim of an embedded 'spy' is nonsense. His 'demand' DOJ investigate something they know to be untrue is an abuse of power, and an effort to distract from his growing legal problems."
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor:
"The president's behavior is the kind of grossly autocratic behavior we'd expect in a banana republic, not a mature democracy. By now, we should all recognize that President Trump's latest demand is just another example of a relentless campaign to distract from the serious wrongdoing being uncovered by the Russia probe."
In a statement on Monday evening after the meeting with Kelly was announced, Schumer called the plan "highly irregular and inappropriate."
"However," he added, "if such a meeting occurs, it must be bipartisan in order to serve as a check on the disturbing tendency of the president's allies to distort facts and undermine the investigation and the people conducting it."
Trump's demand to the Justice Department marked the first time since firing FBI Director James Comey last year that the president has sought to use the power of his office to counter the Russia investigation.
There's no evidence that the FBI installed an informant or spy in Trump's campaign, though the bureau did rely on an informant who was in contact with Trump associates, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The use of informants is routine in law enforcement investigations, even in their preliminary stages.
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has complained that the Justice Department and Rosenstein specifically have stonewalled him on requests for documents related to the Russia probe, including details of the FBI's use of an informant.
Trump has sympathized with Nunes in tweets, and called him "a very courageous man" in a speech Monday at the CIA to mark the swearing-in of its new director Gina Haspel.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley last week sent Rosenstein a letter demanding an unredacted memo from last August outlining the scope and reasons for Mueller's investigation.
The letter also directed Rosenstein to answer many questions about his handling of the matter.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote Rosenstein on Monday asking that he continue to protect the Mueller investigation and rebuking Grassley for trying to obtain sensitive information about an ongoing probe.
"Congress should respect the need for secrecy during ongoing investigations and prosecutions and work with, not against, the department to ensure that information is protected," she wrote.
Information for this article was contributed by Justin Sink, Chris Strohm, Steven T. Dennis, Erik Wasson and Billy House of Bloomberg News; by Seung Min Kim, Matt Zapotosky, Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig, Devlin Barrett, Robert Costa, Shane Harris and Karoun Demirjian of The Washington Post; and by Desmond Butler, Chad Day, Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Eric Tucker, Darlene Superville and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/22/2018