Top Senate Judiciary Republican unloads on colleague over tweet about Russia probe

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Chuck Grassley.

• Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley upbraided Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse over a tweet Whitehouse sent earlier this month.
• The tweet implied that the Senate Judiciary's probe of Russia's election interference, which Grassley oversees, had been improperly influenced by President Donald Trump.
• The back-and-forth between Whitehouse and Grassley is the latest example of partisan infighting among the congressional committees investigating Russia's election interference.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on Wednesday that upbraided Whitehouse for a tweet he sent earlier this month.

The Democrat's tweet insinuated that the Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs, had been pressured by the White House to shift the direction of the Russia probe toward former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Here's the tweet:

Whitehouse had circled a paragraph from a New York Times report that said President Donald Trump had asked a Republican senator to examine Clinton's relationship with the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which hired former British spy Christopher Steele to research Trump's ties to Russia.

Grassley was not named in the report, and Whitehouse did not identify him by name in his tweet. But Grassley is among those who has called for a second special counsel to investigate the Clintons' relationship with Russia and has raised questions about who paid Fusion and why it has never registered as a foreign agent.

Still, Grassley seemed indignant.

"Your insinuation is baseless," he told Whitehouse in the letter.

"As you know," he continued, "I have included you and your staff in the private, voluntary interviews the Committee has been conducting, including one I procured with Donald Trump Jr., where your staff and the Ranking Member's staff had as much time to ask any question they wanted on any topic, without limitation."

Grassley added that his concerns about Fusion's role "in creating and disseminating the dossier were not prompted by any outside source" other than a Washington Post report published in February that said the FBI attempted to pay Steele to continue his work on the Trump-Russia dossier.

"Your erroneous tweet has since been referenced in the media, and the myth that I took some instruction on the direction of the Committee's oversight work from the President has spread as a result," Grassley wrote. "Now that you know any such claim would not be true, I would hope you would tweet a correction so that your followers also know it is false. And next time, please do me the courtesy of asking me directly, so as to avoid spreading this kind of misinformation."

Fusion GPS is currently fighting the House Intelligence Committee over a subpoena for the firm's bank records. As part of that legal battle, Fusion's lawyers argued that the subpoena was issued for political purposes. They included a copy of Whitehouse's tweet as evidence that Republicans were investigating Fusion in bad faith.

The Judiciary Committee's chief investigative counsel, Jason Foster, asked Fusion to amend its filing to reflect the fact that Grassley had pushed back against Whitehouse's tweet.

The back-and-forth between Whitehouse and Grassley is the latest example of partisan infighting among the congressional committees investigating Russia's election interference.

The Judiciary committee's top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, recently began sending out a flurry of letters to witnesses requesting new documents and interviews related to potential collusion between Trump's campaign team and Russia. 

Grassley has not signed off on the letters, all of which have been made public by the panel's Democrats. Nor did Feinstein sign off on 13 letters Grassley sent in October seeking more information about FBI agent Peter Strzok and an informant in the Uranium One probe, among others.

A representative for Whitehouse did not return a request for comment.

Read the full letter below: