New Russia-inspired bill...

Feinstein plans new Russia-inspired bill as Judiciary probe ruptures

By ELANA SCHOR and KYLE CHENEY

The Senate Judiciary Committee's GOP chairman and top Democrat are splitting off in different directions when it comes to investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, risking a collapse of their once bipartisan probe.

While Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) digs deeper into a uranium sale approved by Hillary Clinton's State Department that the House GOP is also investigating, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is working on legislation that would make it illegal for Americans to accept help from foreign nationals to influence an election — citing a meeting that Donald Trump Jr. held at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Kremlin allies as an example.

“No foreign entity should interfere,” Feinstein said on Wednesday.

Feinstein is working with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on the foreign-influence bill, a spokesman said.

The legislation gives Feinstein, who's facing a primary challenge from the left, a platform to underscore her interest in an issue the liberal grass roots has seized on.

Tensions between Grassley and Feinstein appeared to rise after the Republican sent a passel of letters to central figures in the James Comey firing and the Trump-Russia nexus without the Democrat’s signature. The duo had previously collaborated on high-profile requests in their Russia investigation, including a bid for the CIA to grant their members access to classified material already viewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Among the figures Grassley asked for information and interviews were Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Both Kushner and Veselnitskaya attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, initially advertised as a conduit for opposition research that could hurt Clinton’s campaign.

Asked why Grassley would press ahead without securing her signature, Feinstein was curt. “It’s his right to send letters — you ask him,” she said Tuesday.

A Grassley spokesman said the chairman talked about the letters with Feinstein and “decided to send them now to avoid further delay in reaching an agreement to co-sign them.” And Grassley himself sounded a collaborative note on Wednesday, telling reporters that Feinstein’s staff would be able to sit in on interviews resulting from his requests “to any extent they want to.”

“We’re still continuing to work together,” Grassley told reporters. “And we’ve had good responses to the letters we’ve sent out.”

Grassley is respected by many in the minority for his career-long pursuit of an aggressive oversight role for Congress, no matter which party occupies the White House. But he dealt a blow to Democratic hopes last week by confirming that he does not plan to force a formal executive privilege claim from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that would cover Sessions' evasion of questions from the Senate that touch on private conversations with Trump.

And Feinstein hinted at the partisan pressures facing the judiciary panel's probe earlier this month, telling CBS that she expects any evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump allies to emerge from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the same issue.

Yet even as Grassley and Feinstein move their Russia inquiries in different directions, Blumenthal predicted that Judiciary Committee members would still find ways to get things done across the aisle.

“There’s no question that the American people want this investigation to be bipartisan, and I still think that there are opportunities to do it together that we should seize,” Blumenthal said in an interview.