"People should know if foreign governments, political parties or other foreign interests are trying to influence U.S. policy or public opinion," Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Senators alarmed by Russian influence on U.S. politics High-profile Trump campaign witnesses were absent from the hearing after agreeing to behind-the-scenes interviews.

Senators of both parties expressed alarm Wednesday that Russia and other countries are working to influence the U.S. political process — and said that the Justice Department is doing far too little in response.

Their comments came at a long-awaited Senate hearing on foreign influence on U.S. politics, which was earlier set to feature Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. The top Trump campaign figures cut deals with the Senate Judiciary Committee to give their testimony behind the scenes, draining much of the drama from the hearing.


Still, lawmakers raised serious concerns about the broader issue at hand, with the June 2016 meeting between Trump Jr., Manafort, Jared Kushner and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya hanging over the hearing.

“People should know if foreign governments, political parties or other foreign interests are trying to influence U.S. policy or public opinion,” said the panel’s GOP chairman, Chuck Grassley of Iowa. “Given recent Russian and other efforts to influence our election this law has never been more important. Unfortunately, it appears the Justice Department and FBI have been seriously lax in enforcement of the Foreign Agent Registration Act.”

“Justice Department officials cannot even agree on what makes a good case for enforcement of the law,” Grassley declared.

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, agreed that too little is being done to make sure people acting for foreign governments are registering.

“My conclusion is that authorities don’t take the law seriously,” Feinstein said.

FBI and Justice Department witnesses at the hearing declined to discuss specifics of the ongoing Trump-Russia probe, but a top FBI official described in unusually grave terms the threat of covert foreign efforts to affect U.S. policy.

“Our country is under relentless assault by hostile state actors and their proxies,” FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap said. “They use people from across their governments and from all walks of life to pursue their desire to gain strategic advantage over the United States in whatever ways they can. … Make no mistake: our economy, our national security and our way of life are being actively threatened by state actors today and every day.”

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Justice Department national security official Adam Hickey said prosecuting violations of FARA is difficult, in part because prosecutors are required to show that a suspect deliberately violated the law.

“The high burden of proving willfulness, difficulties in proving direction or control by a foreign principal, and exemptions available under the statute make criminal prosecution for FARA violations challenging,” Hickey told the panel.

The hearing was cut short before the sole witness likely to opine publicly on aspects of the Trump-Russia controversy, New York investor Bill Browder, had the chance to testify. Democrats invoked a Senate rule Wednesday barring committees from meeting more than two hours after the Senate went into session.

As a result, the Judiciary Committee hearing was cut off after 90 minutes. Grassley said the panel will reconvene at 9 A.M. Thursday to hear from Browder, who has become a crusader against Russian influence in the U.S. after his Russian lawyer died under suspicious circumstances in a Moscow prison in 2009.

The death of Browder’s attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, led Congress to pass the sanctions law that the Russian government allies reportedly complained about at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Another witness once summoned for Wednesday’s hearing, private investigator Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, was also scratched from the witness list after reaching an agreement for a private interview. Simpson has come under fire for his role in circulating a dossier that made unsubstantiated claims about salacious information the Russians were said to have on then-candidate Donald Trump.

“Since March 2017, I’ve been asking about the Russians who were working with Fusion GPS to smear Mr. Browder and undermine the Magnitsky Act,” Grassley said. “Did the FBI know that Fusion pitched propaganda for the Russians even as it pushed the dossier?”

Fusion issued a statement saying it was being attacked because it surfaced concerns about Trump’s Russian contacts.

“Let’s be clear about what’s really happening: The President’s political allies are targeting Fusion GPS because the firm was reported to be the first to raise the alarm over the Trump campaign’s links to Russia,” the company said.

While Grassley and Feinstein struck a cooperative tone, Wednesday’s abbreviated hearing sometimes descended into partisan disputes.

While Feinstein offered praise for Grassley’s handling of the committee’s investigation, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) hinted at some irritation that Trump Jr. and Manafort were not testifying Wednesday.

“While it’s disappointing that some of our witnesses aren’t here today, it’s important to move forward in a bipartisan way,” Klobuchar said.

Several Republicans said they were disappointed that the Democrats’ invocation of the two-hour rule was thwarting such a hearing that members of both parties said is vital.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the Democratic angry resistance has extended to the level of obstructing nominees across and the board and, now, shutting down committee hearings,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said. “You have senators not willing to do the jobs they were elected to do.”

During the hearing, Grassley didn’t join in his GOP colleagues’ complaints about the use of the two-hour rule. However, later in the day, he issued a written statement blasting Democrats over it.

“I don’t know if the minority is intentionally trying to block testimony that may be critical of a firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, but I’ll bet two bits that had Paul Manafort or Donald Trump, Jr. appeared at today’s hearing, it would not have been prematurely shut down,” Grassley said. “The Democrat leadership is playing politics, plain and simple.”

Meanwhile, some Democrats continued to pound away on Trump’s alleged Russian ties, with one suggesting that Trump’s tax returns could contain more evidence of potential Russian influence.

Under questioning by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the FBI’s top counterintelligence official told lawmakers Wednesday that tax returns are often valuable evidence in investigations of foreign efforts to influence Americans through business deals.

Priestap agreed that tax returns “can be of investigative value” in such inquiries.

Neither Priestap nor Whitehouse specifically referenced Trump. But Whitehouse noted that Russia often uses business relationships to exert influence in foreign countries.

“So, in an investigation into a foreign agent’s efforts to influence U.S. policy, being able to understand business relationships could be vital to understanding the influence scheme?” Whitehouse wondered.

“Absolutely,” Priestap replied.

Priestap also agreed with Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) that the Russian propaganda campaign and cyberattacks in 2016 were “unusually loud.” So loud, Franken said, that it appeared as though Russian officials wanted Americans to be aware of their efforts — part of a broader strategy to destabilize the political system.

Some Republicans complained that Democrats were putting a one-sided focus on the Trump campaign while ignoring influence efforts aimed at or involving Democrats.

“If we are going to get to the bottom of this we need to investigate the whole story,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) complained, even as he dismissed as “outlandish” some of the charges against the Trump campaign.

“We have to treat this as more than just fodder for partisan gamesmanship,” Hatch said. “The Democratic National Committee has questions to answer and the Clinton campaign has questions to answer.”