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U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is finally getting the opportunity he's been seeking since last year to look into Russia and the Donald Trump campaign ("Tinker Tailor Senator Spy," WW, Feb. 22, 2017).
On Thursday, March 30, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which Wyden serves as a key minority member, will hold its first open hearings in its investigation to "examine disinformation, focusing on a primer in Russian active measures and influence campaigns" in the 2016 presidential election.
The Senate committee has moved to the center of the action in the biggest scandal plaguing the Donald Trump administration since House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (D-Calif.) apparently sabotaged a concurrent investigation by his own committee last week.
Nunes reportedly ditched his own staff in the dead of night to inform the White House of information received by his committee, in what Congressional Democrats and some Republicans denounced an improper effort to protect Trump. "What happened…was a massive hit on the credibility of that investigation," Wyden said March 24 in response to questions from WW.
The Senate hearings are scheduled to start at 7am and 11am Portland time and can be streamed live at c-span.org. Key witnesses to be called include former National Security Agency director Keith Alexander, who now heads a private contractor, IronNet Cybersecurity, as well as Kevin Mandia, the chief executive of another contractor called FireEye that published some of the key digital forensic analyses attempting to connect the Russian government to last year's hack of the Democratic National Committee.
And he's made it clear he wants to follow the money. On March 29, Wyden wrote to Senate intel committee leadership requesting "a thorough review of any and all financial relationships between Russia and President Trump and his associates."
The text of that letter, addressed to Senate intel committee chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who was a member of Trump's transition team, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Virginia) appears below.
This post has been updated with the full text of Wyden's letter.