Democrats block key witness against

Posted: Jul 28, 2017

Senate Democrats used a parliamentary maneuver Wednesday to cut short a high-profile hearing, where a key witness was set to testify on Russia's misdeeds and also raise fresh allegations against the company behind the infamous anti-Trump dossier. Bill Browder, the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital, was set to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the co-founder of the firm Fusion GPS was hired to conduct a "smear campaign" against him. Further, he planned to testify the campaign was orchestrated by Natalia Veselnitskaya -- the Russian attorney who sought the highly scrutinized Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort in June 2016. Browder released written testimony ahead of the hearing but his public remarks were delayed when Democrats invoked the "two-hour rule" to protest Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare. The seldom-used rule bars committees from meeting more than two hours after the full Senate begins a session. “I don’t know if the minority is intentionally trying to block testimony that may be critical of a firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, but I’ll bet two bits that had Paul Manafort or Donald Trump, Jr. appeared at today’s hearing, it would not have been prematurely shut down," Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. "The Democrat leadership is playing politics, plain and simple." Browder now is expected to testify Thursday, but his statement makes clear that he will have plenty to say about Fusion GPS, the shadowy intel company founded by a pair of former Wall Street Journal reporters, including Glenn Simpson. ;