Paul Ryan accuses Trump administration of 'stonewalling' requests on Russia dossier

'We’ve had these document requests with the administration, with the FBI in particular, for a long time,' Mr Ryan said

Prominent Republican and Speaker of the US House Representatives said the administration need to comply with requests ‘immediately’ (Getty)

Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has accused the Trump administration of “stonewalling” legislators’ requests for information about the infamous Russia dossier.

The hunt for details about the 35-page document, which sets out allegations of ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, has intensified in recent months, as multiple congressional panels – along with special counsel Robert Mueller – continue to investigate whether Trump campaign advisers colluded with the Russian government.

“We’ve had these document requests with the administration, with the FBI in particular, for a long time and they’ve been stonewalling,” Mr Ryan told Reuters, adding that the department and the FBI need to comply with the requests “and they need to do it immediately”.

Mr Ryan’s comments came after The Washington Post reported that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) partially funded the dossier, which was produced by Fusion GPS, a private research firm in Washington, DC. Fusion hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to compile the report.

Speaking about the dossier before heading to speaking engagements in Dallas on Wednesday, Mr Trump said that it was a “disgrace” that Democrats had helped pay for research which produced the document.

“It’s just really – it’s a very sad commentary on politics in this country,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump has called the material “phony stuff” and “fake news”, and in an earlier tweet he portrayed himself as the aggrieved party, posting a quote he said was from Fox News that referred to him as “the victim”.

“Clinton campaign & DNC paid for research that led to the anti-Trump Fake News Dossier. The victim here is the President.’ @FoxNews,” Mr Trump wrote on Twitter.

Lawyer Marc Elias and his firm, Perkins Coie, were reported to have retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Mr Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the party’s primary.

Reporters from The New York Times blasted the Clinton campaign and the DNC over the report.

“When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously,’” Kenneth Vogel tweeted, referring to Mr Elias.

Mr Elias did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent, having declined to comment to the Post for its report.

In a statement, the DNC seemed to try to distance its current leadership from the situation.

“Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organisation,” said DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa.

“But let’s be clear, there is a serious federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and the American public deserves to know what happened,” she added.

The new disclosure is likely to fuel Mr Trump’s repeated complaints that the document is a collection of salacious and uncorroborated claims. However, the FBI has been investigating it as part of the probe into possible coordination last year between Russia and the Trump campaign, with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team having spoken in recent weeks with Mr Steele.

The dossier contends that Russia was engaged in a longstanding effort to aid Mr Trump, and had included compromising information about the then-candidate.

As well as the dossier, Mr Trump has cast doubt over the findings of the FBI, NSA and CIA that Russia waged a large-scale campaign to interfere in the election. The FBI and CIA have said with “high” confidence that the effort was aimed at hurting Ms Clinton’s candidacy and helping Mr Trump. The NSA found the same with “moderate” confidence.

Last week, Fusion’s partners Peter Fritsch and Thomas Catán invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, refusing to answer questions about their work before the House Intelligence Committee.

Fusion lawyer Josh Levy said company officials had cooperated with previous requests from Congress, and its founder, Glenn Simpson previously testified for 10 hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Republicans on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee earlier this month subpoenaed an unidentified bank for the last two years of records of the accounts of Fusion GPS.

A US judge has given Fusion GPS until Thursday to reach an agreement with Congress over the subpoena.

Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia late on Tuesday temporarily extended the deadline for complying with the subpoena, according to court records seen on Wednesday.

Politico reported that company officials have accused the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, of trying to compel them to disclose who funded their opposition research on Mr Trump, which they say would force the company to violate its clients’ guarantee of confidentiality and harm its business model.

Responding to the news, Mr Trump wrote on Twitter: “Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?”