Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked for access to an undercover informant who helped the FBI chronicle bribery, kickbacks and money laundering inside Moscow’s nuclear industry as part of an Obama-era Russia corruption case, The Hill reports.
Feinstein’s general counsel Heather Sawyer sent an email this week to the lawyer for the former FBI informant, William Campbell, seeking to be included in conversations involving the committee.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Chuck Grassley secured an agreement with the Justice Department to allow Campbell to talk to Congress about the evidence he gathered for the FBI from 2009 to 2014 when he worked as a consultant for Rosatom Tenex, Russia’s state-owned commercial nuclear arm. Campbell’s work led to the indictments of three major players, including Tenex official Vadim Mikerin, a key Russian nuclear figure inside the United States who was sentenced to 48 months in prison in December 2015, The Hill adds.
Grassley wants to know what the FBI did with the evidence it first gathered in 2009 that Mikerin and others inside the Russian nuclear industry were engaged in illegal activity. The GOP chairman also wants to know whether the Obama administration was alerted to the illegal activity before it approved the sale of U.S. uranium assets to Rosatom and made other favorable decisions worth billions of dollars to Russia’s nuclear industry.
“I’m writing to follow-up on the October 18, 2017, letter from Chairman Grassley. I understand that you represent someone who may have information of interest to the Committee and that discussions are underway to arrange for a possible interview,” Sawyer wrote Campbell’s attorney, Victoria Toensing.
Toensing signaled in a response back to Feinstein’s staff that she and her client will cooperate, according to an email exchange reviewed by The Hill. Feinstein first showed her interest in the case a few weeks ago in an interview with The Hill where she said she would like to learn more about the FBI case and what happened with the evidence.
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