Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray made an unannounced visit to Speaker Paul Ryan's office Wednesday as the Justice Department grapples with an increasingly hostile faction of House Republicans demanding documents related to the bureau's Russia probe.

Rosenstein was spotted entering Ryan's office, and a spokesman for the speaker confirmed that Rosenstein and Wray had requested the meeting. A second person familiar with the meeting said it was related to a document request issued over the summer by House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes.


Nunes (R-Calif) has mounted an aggressive push — with the threat of contempt citations for members of the FBI and Justice Department — to glean more information about how the FBI handled a disputed dossier alleging illicit ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin.

“Unfortunately, DOJ/FBI's intransigence with respect to the August 24 subpoenas is part of a broader pattern of behavior that can no longer be tolerated,” Nunes wrote to Rosenstein in a letter provided to Fox News last week.

Nunes is seeking details about meetings between FBI officials and those who helped compile the dossier. He also demanded interviews with a slate of top FBI officials. And he's floated the notion of issuing contempt resolutions against Rosenstein and Wray if they fail to comply.

Trump has called the dossier false, even as investigators sought to corroborate some of the allegations within it. But Republicans remain skeptical about whether the FBI used unverified information as it began pursuing its investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia.


That investigation has included whether the FBI obtained surveillance warrants for members of the Trump campaign team and whether the dossier was the basis for them. They've also raised questions about the FBI's relationship with Christopher Steele, the former British agent who authored the dossier, and whether he was paid by the FBI.

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Steele was commissioned to compile the dossier by Fusion GPS, a firm hired by the campaign of Hillary Clinton to conduct opposition research on Trump. Fusion's leaders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, took to the The New York Times op-ed page on Tuesday to accuse Republicans of distorting their work and obfuscating a true investigation of Trump's business connections with Russia.

It was not immediately clear what Rosenstein and Wray sought from Ryan. But they've been increasingly at odds with Nunes over his demands to produce documents related to the Russia probe and the use of the dossier. Nunes is also leading a subset of GOP members of the intelligence committee to investigate the Justice Department, with an eye on what some Republicans in Congress have characterized as corruption and political in its top ranks.

But that effort itself has divided Republicans, many of whom are allies of the FBI and are concerned that the escalation of a discrepancy over documents — fanned by Trump allies in Congress and media — could result in lasting damage to the perception of the agency as an independent arbiter of the law.

