Democratic leaders in the House and Senate on Monday requested a classified counterintelligence briefing from the FBI, citing concerns that members of Congress are being targeted by a “concerted foreign interference campaign” ahead of the November elections.<\/p>\n
Speaker\u00a0Nancy Pelosi<\/a>\u00a0(D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader\u00a0Charles Schumer<\/a>\u00a0(D-N.Y.), House Intelligence Committee Chairman\u00a0Adam Schiff<\/a>\u00a0(D-Calif.) and Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member\u00a0Mark Warner<\/a>\u00a0(D-Va.) sent a\u00a0letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray<\/a>\u00a0requesting the all-members briefing take place before the August congressional recess.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November,\u201d the Democratic leaders wrote.<\/p>\n A congressional official told The Hill that the request was made based on a \u201cclassified addendum\u201d included in the letter to Wray that \u201cdraws, in large part, from the Executive Branch\u2019s own reporting and analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe counterintelligence experts at the FBI must provide the full Congress with a defensive counterintelligence briefing on these threats before the August recess,\u201d the official added.<\/p>\n The Democratic leaders asked that the FBI provide details of the briefing by later in the day on Monday, citing the \u201congoing nature of these threats\u201d for the quick turnaround.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the seriousness and specificity of these threats, as members of congressional leadership and the congressional intelligence committees we believe it is imperative that the FBI provide a classified defensive briefing to all Members of Congress and that the briefing draw on all-source intelligence information and analysis, consistent with due regard for the protection of sensitive intelligence sources and methods,\u201d the leaders wrote to Wray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Democratic leaders in the House and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26985,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26984\/revisions\/26985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}