Reuters: Senate gives limited resources to Russia election-meddling probe

Published April 25, 2017 at 12:22 pm

Senator John McCain (C) listens during the Senate Armed Services Committee on Information surrounding the Marines United Website at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington March 14, 2017.The Senate Armed Services Committee held the hearing with General Robert Neller, who heads the Marine Corps. The Pentagon faced a burgeoning scandal March 10, 2017 as more pictures of naked female service members apparently shared without their consent by male colleagues have turned up on secret social media sites. The scandal broke over the weekend with the revelation that pictures of female Marines in various stages of undress had been shared in a secret Facebook group called "Marines United."Membership in the group was restricted to current and former Marines, but it had as many as 30,000 members before it was taken down.The story was first reported by The War Horse, a news group run by Marine veteran Thomas Brennan.He said some of the photos were taken surreptitiously, while others had been taken by the women themselves but shared without their consent. / AFP PHOTO / Tasos Katopodis

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The Senate’s main investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is equipped with a much smaller staff than previous high-profile intelligence and scandal probes in Congress, which could potentially affect its progress, according to sources and a Reuters review of public records.

With only seven staff members initially assigned to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-month-old investigation, progress has been sluggish and minimal, said two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity.