Watchdog files ethics complaint against House Intel staff over alleged text message leak
By: Trish Turner and Benjamin Siegel, ABC News, March 2, 2018
A government watchdog group filed a new ethics complaint against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and majority committee staff on Thursday following a report that Senate investigators have determined House Republicans leaked private text messages related to the ongoing probe of Russian election interference.
According to the New York Times, the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee believe Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee leaked a text message exchange between Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Senate panel’s top Democrat, and Adam Waldman, a lawyer representing a Russian oligarch, to Fox News in February.
The incident raises questions about whether the partisan infighting that has slowed the House probe is suddenly impacting Senate investigators as well.
The Campaign for Accountability, a liberal watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., amended an earlier complaint filed with the Office of Government Ethics and called for an investigation into whether Nunes and his staff violated House and committee rules by “leaking information provided to the committee during the course of an ongoing investigation.”
A committee spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.