House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Wednesday that if a planned meeting to brief Republican congressional leaders on highly classified information related to the Russia probe moves forward Thursday, it will effectively kill the possibility of a bipartisan briefing.
Speaking at a CNN town hall event, Pelosi said that the Thursday meeting should not be allowed to move forward because it could jeopardize any remaining possibility of bipartisan cooperation on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
There shouldn’t be a Republican briefing … I’ve never seen anything like this,” Pelosi said. “This is highly unusual that you would have such a briefing in the middle of an investigation … and that it should be partisan is entirely unacceptable.”
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“If they do that tomorrow, I think that puts a nix on a Gang of Eight briefing,” she added, referring to the bipartisan group of eight House and Senate lawmakers, who are briefed on highly classified intelligence matters.
Pelosi’s comments came a day before a select group of Republican lawmakers were set to meet with law enforcement and intelligence officials to review classified information about the FBI’s use of a top-secret informant during the 2016 election.
The White House said on Tuesday that no Democrats would be present at the Thursday meeting.
But the White House faced backlash from Democrats over that decision, prompting officials to schedule a meeting for the Gang of Eight “following the Memorial Day recess.”
Some Republicans have raised concerns about the informant, who met with at least three Trump campaign advisers in 2016, as the FBI set out to examine the possibility that Russia was seeking to meddle in the presidential election.
President Trump and his allies have suggested that the FBI and Justice Department used the informant to improperly spy on his campaign for political purposes, though no evidence has emerged to support that claim.
–Updated at 9:21 p.m.