The letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, written by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and top Democrats’ intelligence committees in the House and Senate, also included a public request that the office inform all legislators. It came amid increasingly vocal warnings from Democrats, including Biden’s presidential campaign, about foreign interference in the 2020 race and fear of another Kremlin-led effort to boost Trump’s reelection prospects.
Republicans were not asked to join the Democrats’ push for a briefing and have since rejected it as a partisan effort.
The classified addendum to the public version of the letter included intelligence material that “relies largely on executive branch reports and analysis,” according to a congressional official.
The packages, the sources said, were sent by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who met with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Kiev last December to discuss the Biden family investigation.
In a statement to POLITICO, Derkach said he sent the materials to lawmakers and Mulvaney with the aim of “creating an inter-parliamentary association called ‘Friends of Ukraine STOP Corruption’.” He added that he recently notified Grassley, Johnson, Graham, and Democrats Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon “about the content and materials published and expressed” at their press conferences.
Spokesmen for Peters and Wyden said their offices had never received anything from Derkach.
A spokesman for Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, initially deferred questions to Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Who is investigating Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Another Graham spokesman, Kevin Bishop, said the senator believes that any such information should be turned over to the Justice Department or intelligence committees for examination.
“That said, we are not familiar with receiving any information from this individual,” Bishop added.
Taylor Foy, a Grassley spokesperson, similarly called the claims “false” and said his office never received information from Derkach “nor have we made any effort to contact him.” He added that Grassley, who partnered with Johnson in many of his investigations that remained out of public view, did not have access to the classified attachment to the Democrats’ letter, and criticized Democrats for “running into the press with leaks. ” apparently from classified documents and falsehoods. “
Johnson’s spokesman, Austin Altenburg, said “the claims are false” and then said that the senator “never received or would collect information from this person or people like him.” Another former Ukrainian lawmaker, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, told The Washington Post earlier this month that he turned over materials, including tapes allegedly with Biden, to Johnson’s committee.
Derkach appeared to post at least some of the materials he claims to have sent to lawmakers and Mulvaney on his website, NabuLeaks, which he created last year as a platform for his allegations against the Bidens and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
In a December letter to Nunes he posted on the site, Derkach said he would send the congressman materials that included “the facts of the inefficient use of US taxpayer funds,” excerpts from a related criminal proceeding and the transcript of a news story. conference he had held that seemed to include leaked audio of Biden talking to Poroshenko. Derkach said in the letter that he would send the same materials to Mulvaney.
Derkach denies that his goal is to harm Biden’s presidential prospects and says he is not working on behalf of the Kremlin. He has previously said that “the main objective of our activity is to pursue the interests of Ukraine, exposing international corruption, [and] maintain partnership relations between strategic partners: Ukraine and the United States. “
Derkach, who was previously aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, is now independent, is a student at the Moscow FSB Academy, formerly known as the KGB Dzerzhinsky High School. Derkach has denied any connection to the foreign intelligence services.
Several of the people Derkach has made allegations of over the past year have been called as witnesses in Johnson’s investigation, including former special envoy for international energy affairs Amos Hochstein, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Geoffrey Pyatt, former State Department official Victoria Nuland and his diplomatic career George Kent, who now serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Kent, a key witness in the impeachment investigation, is scheduled to testify before Johnson’s committee as early as Friday.
The overlap has raised Democrats’ suspicions that the investigation has become a vehicle for what they describe as “laundering” of a campaign of foreign influence to harm Biden. Some Democrats have even called Johnson an unwitting agent of Russian disinformation. POLITICO previously reported that the classified annex cites Johnson’s investigation as a source of Democrats’ concerns about possible Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election. The public letter does not specify the reasons for that concern.
Wray previously said that Americans should share with the FBI any information from foreign governments or their emissaries that purport to influence the election.
“If any nation-state, or someone acting on behalf of a nation-state, contacts any public official or member of any campaign, to influence or interfere in an election, then that is something the FBI would like to know “Wray said on June 12, 2019, a day before Trump chided him and said he would likely accept such help.
Johnson, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, has argued that the investigation is legitimate and that his employees thoroughly examine all the information they receive.
“We are being very careful with our research. This information that was supposedly given to us, we got nothing. I don’t know what they are talking about, ”Johnson said this week, referring to the claim that his investigation is based on Russian disinformation. “We look at everything we enter and I take everything with a large grain of salt. We are very careful. We examine these things.
Hunter Biden has acknowledged that Burisma’s position was secured due in part to his last name. But the Biden campaign has criticized Johnson’s broader investigation, which relies heavily on Biden’s efforts to eliminate a Ukrainian prosecutor whom Johnson has acknowledged that “everyone” wanted to disappear, as a “desperate campaign of taxpayer-funded smear “based on” a farce, far-discredited far-right conspiracy theory.
Johnson recently quoted a Democratic public affairs firm that did consulting work for Burisma, and is considering subpoenas for Hochstein and Tony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser for the Biden campaign.
“We are collecting information, but I am not aware of anything that is Russian disinformation,” Johnson added. “We are going to examine, we are going to validate everything we do.”
Graham similarly warned that information from a foreign source should be thoroughly vetted by US intelligence agencies, warning in February that “Russia is playing us all like a fiddle.”
The classified details in the Democrats’ letter come in part from information provided by the intelligence community to the so-called Band of Eight. The group includes Pelosi, Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and intelligence committee leaders in both parties.
Some Democrats have obliquely referred to intelligence, suggesting that it refers to a nefarious Kremlin-backed campaign of influence similar to the one that rocked the 2016 election.
“I have read the intelligence behind this concern. It is highly credible and must be reported to all members of Congress. Our choices belong to us, ”Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) Said in a tweet Wednesday.
When contacted by phone, Swalwell declined to elaborate on any aspect of intelligence that concerned him.
Although Republicans have been equally stingy, they pointed to statements like Swalwell’s to suggest that Democrats are trying to use classified intelligence weapons to politically harm Republicans.
“It was clearly a partisan letter,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO when asked about the Democrats’ letter to Wray.
Betsy Woodruff Swan contributed to this report..
