The Department of Justice plans to share additional information with senior members of Congress early next week about the FBI’s decision to deploy an informant to meet with members of President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, Politico reported early Thursday.
According to a DOJ official who spoke with Politico, the lawmakers included in the bipartisan Gang of Eight group will be have the chance to review documents that they didn’t see at the classified meeting between lawmakers and DOJ officials last month. That meeting initially only included Republican members of Congress before Democrats demanded to be included.
“The Department and FBI are prepared to brief members on certain questions specifically raised by the Speaker and other members,” the DOJ official told Politico. “The Department will also provide the documents that were available for review but not inspected by the members at the previous briefing along with some additional material.”
The meeting comes as an increasing number of Republicans break with Trump on his assessment of the use of an FBI informant to gather information about his campaign officials’ contacts with Russia.
On Wednesday Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) — who will be included in the meeting, set for Monday or Tuesday, according to Politico — said he saw “no evidence” to support Trump’s claims that the informant was a “spy” sent by the Obama administration to infiltrate his campaign. Trump has seized on the reports of the informant as evidence of his belief in a “deep state” within the FBI that’s biased against him and has dubbed the whole ordeal “spygate.”
