According to published reports Sens. Mark Warner (left) and Richard Burr concluded that House Intelligence Committee Republicans leaked a batch of Warner's text messages to Fox News earlier this month after the senators shared the texts with their House counterparts. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Senate Intel leaders shared concerns with Ryan about Nunes panel

The top Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee held an extraordinary meeting last month with House Speaker Paul Ryan to express concerns about the House Intelligence Committee, a Ryan spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.

The acknowledgement from Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong followed a New York Times report saying the two senators, Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), had concluded that House Intelligence Committee Republicans leaked a batch of Warner's text messages to Fox News earlier this month soon after the House panel obtained transcripts of the texts.


“The speaker heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts," Strong said in a statement. Ryan's office declined to confirm whether the senators called the meeting specifically to complain about the breach.

It is a rare and dramatic gesture for senators to cross the Capitol to complain about their House counterparts, and the meeting with Ryan — the details of which remain murky — appears to be the latest sign of political rancor generated by the House panel, led by its controversial chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

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Burr told reporters at the Capitol that the Times story's suggestion that he concluded House Republicans were behind the leak was incorrect, saying only that he and Warner met with Ryan to update him on the Senate's panel’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

But the issue casts an even darker pall over a House Intelligence Committee hobbled by partisan feuding. Earlier this week, Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), said he was so fed up with the committee's internal rancor, including alleged media leaks by Democratic members, that he wants the panel's Russia investigation shut down. Though other Republicans haven't gone as far, they've encouraged a swift expedient conclusion for the panel's probe.

The text messages obtained by Fox News last month indicated that Warner had texted last year with Washington lobbyist Adam Waldman in an effort to reach Christopher Steele, the author of a private intelligence dossier of damaging allegations about President Donald Trump's ties to Russia. The committee had struggled for months to contact Steele and the messages suggested Warner had hoped Waldman, an associate of Steele's, could put the panel in touch with the British former spy.

The leak of Warner’s messages was a startling breach, particularly because the Senate Intelligence Committee has operated largely free of public sparring and recriminations — in stark contrast with the House Intelligence Committee, where months of partisan feuding has led to near-total dysfunction.

According to the Times, the senators began to suspect House Republicans were behind the leak because the House had only recently obtained Warner's text messages. According to the Times, the version supplied to Fox News was marked as a Senate document but lacked page numbers — even though the Senate’s version was paginated.

Burr hasn't indicated whether he and Warner raised suspicions with Ryan about House Republicans' role in the leak.

When asked at the Capitol, Warner did not deny that the issue came up in the meeting with Ryan.

"I've been very proud of how our committee has operated in a bipartisan way, where we're going after the truth," he said. "No individual enterprise will interfere in that."

Aides to Warner and Burr did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Nunes did not respond either.

Republicans on the House committee were furious on Tuesday, after nine hours of testimony from White House Communications Director Hope Hicks. Shortly after Hicks departed, stories emerged indicated she had admitted to telling "white lies" on the president's behalf.

Rooney publicly blamed Democrats for selectively leaking portions of Hicks's testimony, telling CNN Tuesday night that Hicks had admitted to the equivalent of saying her boss was not in his office to avoid an unwelcome phone call. After consulting with her lawyers, Hicks made clear that she had never lied about anything related to the Russia investigation.

But Hicks also declined to say whether others in the president's inner circle and family had instructed her to lie, according to a source present for her interview.

Democrats on the panel are increasingly concerned that Republicans will shutter the investigation prematurely and begin drafting a final report, even though both sides are hopelessly divided on the most politically sensitive question of their probe: whether anyone in Trump's orbit aided the Russian effort to influence the 2016 election.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the committee's top Democrat, has released a long list of subpoena requests he and other Democrats had been denied by Republicans.

"The integrity and independence of the Committee and Congress’ investigative and enforcement powers are at stake," Schiff said in a Wednesday statement.

Elana Schor and John Bresnahan contributed to this report.