A university researcher who met staffers for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said he felt threatened after he balked at helping them investigate claims of former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, according to Special Counsel John Durham’s report.
The report, released on Monday, reveals that two researchers met with the staffers on Capitol Hill in November of 2018 in a secure conference room belonging to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The researchers thought they were going to brief the staffers on university research contracts but they were instead asked to analyze a news article about alleged links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank.
“After arriving in the HPSCI secure conference room, Reed Staffer-2 introduced University-I Researcher-3 and University-I Researcher-2 to several HPSCI staffers. During the meeting, University-! Researcher-3 and University-I Researcher-2 began to provide a similar presentation to that which they had given to the Senate staffers,” Durham’s report on the government’s intelligence activities and investigations of Trump’s alleged Russian ties read.
“Soon after the start of the presentation, however, the Committee staffers cut University-I Researcher-3 off and showed him and University- I Researcher-2 a news article about Trump, Russia, and Alfa Bank that University-I Researcher-3 had not seen previously. The staffers asked University-I Researcher-3 to read the article and said they wanted University-1 ‘s help with the matter, and Reed Staffer-2 said University-I Researcher-3 ‘… could make it easier.”
When one of the researchers responded to the ask by saying that it would be inappropriate for a public university to conduct that sort of research, he told Durham that he felt threatened.
“University-I Researcher-3 told investigators that Reed Staffer-2 then said, ‘We are now in charge,’ and one of the HPSCI staffers said that their boss (Congressman Adam Schiff) would soon take over leadership of HPSCI. University-I Researcher-3 took the comment as a mild threat,” Durham’s report reads.
One of the researchers then “dragged” his colleague out of the meeting and recalled telling him, “Don’t touch this with a ten foot pole, stay away from this.”
He then informed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the request from the HPSCI staffers and his objections to it.
“University-I Researcher-3 recalls that DARPA Program Manager- I listened but did not react substantively to the information,” Durham’s report notes.
Schiff, who led a House Intelligence Committee investigation into Trump, has long claimed to have “direct evidence” of collusion between Trump and Russia that has remained unproven.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) stripped Schiff of his position on the House Intelligence Committee in January over his promotion of debunked Trump conspiracies.
Federal investigators have found no evidence to support the claim – which originated from the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and opposition research firm Fusion GPS – that there was a server backchannel between Trump and Alfa Bank.