Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I intend to object to any unanimous consent request relating to the nomination of William R. Evanina, to be Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, PN1548. During the course of the Judiciary Committee's inquiry into how the Justice Department and FBI handled the Clinton and Russia investigations, committee staff have reviewed text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. In some of the text messages, an individual named ``Evanina'' is mentioned in the context of government officials having briefed then Vice President-Elect Pence on national security related issues and planning to brief him a second time. The name was redacted from text messages initially provided to Congress. ``Evanina'' most likely refers to the nominee who is and was at that time Acting Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. The committee needs to more fully understand the meaning of the apparent references to Mr. Evanina in the Strzok-Page texts and will need to obtain further context from him and the Justice Department in order to do so before I could consent to proceeding to consider his confirmation. The committee has recently experienced increasing difficulty in obtaining relevant documents and briefings from the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI. For example.…”