A Senate committee is pressing ahead with an investigation into the former vice president’s son even as the coronavirus pandemic rages on.
A key Senate committee is vowing to press forward with its investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, despite logistical challenges posed by the global coronavirus pandemic.
The probe, which Democrats vigorously oppose, has fueled tension among the Senate’s ranks, even breaking out into a rare and previously unreported verbal altercation between senators during a classified briefing.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Republican-led inquiry was entering a critical phase last month when senators dropped all nonessential work to focus on delivering economic and medical relief as the coronavirus reached a crisis point in the United States. The Senate is not due back in Washington until April 20 at the earliest.
“While the chairman is primarily focused on the once-in-a-generation crisis we’re experiencing, our oversight staff is continuing to push ahead with their work. Nothing has changed in our long-term plans for our investigations,” said Austin Altenburg, a spokesman for the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).
In fact, a Senate staffer working on the probe explicitly told one witness’ legal team several weeks ago — just before the wave of lockdowns — that the coronavirus pandemic would not impede the committee’s probe, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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A Republican senator, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the matter, posited that the probe is no longer a “priority,” despite assurances from Johnson’s office, and said lawmakers hadn’t received new information recently about it.
Even before the coronavirus outbreak consumed senators’ schedules and forced them to leave Washington for longer than planned, there were already indications that the investigation was facing setbacks.
Last month, before the coronavirus began spreading rapidly in the U.S., Johnson decided to scrap initial plans for a full committee vote on a subpoena to Andrii Telizhenko — a former consultant for Blue Star Strategies — due to concerns about his credibility. GOP senators initially sought information from Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat, because he claimed to have been tasked with digging up dirt on Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
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Ahead of the scheduled vote to subpoena Telizhenko on March 11, the FBI’s foreign influence task force briefed committee aides about him, according to a Senate aide. The briefing in particular touched on Telizhenko’s unsubstantiated claims about coordination between the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee in 2016 — allegations often pushed without evidence by Trump and some of his allies.
A day earlier, U.S. intelligence officials briefed all senators on the federal government’s election security efforts for the 2020 contests. During that briefing, according to four sources familiar with the matter, senators asked FBI Director Christopher Wray about Telizhenko in the context of Russia’s efforts to sow disinformation in the U.S. electoral system. According to another person briefed on the interaction, the initial questions centered on whether Telizhenko was an unreliable actor who was taking part in that disinformation campaign.
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The briefing also featured several back-and-forth interactions between senators, which is highly unusual for a top-secret briefing of this nature, according to a person briefed on it. Johnson engaged directly with some of his colleagues, added the person, who called it “combative” and “personal.” Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) were among the senators who expressed concern during the briefing about the Senate’s continued pursuit of the Burisma allegations, sources said.
“Sen. Tester expressed concern over the reliance on reportedly untrustworthy foreign nationals and cautioned his colleagues against playing politics with national security,” said a spokeswoman for Tester.
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The probe, which Democrats vigorously oppose, has fueled tension among the Senate’s ranks, even breaking out into a rare and previously unreported verbal altercation between senators during a classified briefing https://t.co/LGWEAhebe8
— POLITICO (@politico) April 3, 2020
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