The Wall Street Journal - 03.04.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Friday, April 3, 2020 |A

enough polling place workers.

Gov. Tony Evers said in a

court filing this week he was

turning to the National Guard

to help staff polling sites.

Both Mr. Evers, a Democrat,

and leaders in the Republican-

majority state legislature have

defended keeping the April 7

date, pointing out that general

elections are being held for

many local offices across the

state. Officials are concerned

that delays could result in

terms expiring for local offices

if the voting was pushed back.

“You could have a bunch of

places where you don’t have a

mayor or a president of the

school board,” said Joe

Wineke, a former Wisconsin

Democratic Party chairman.

He said he expects Election

Day turnout will be extremely

low.

Court challenges have

added uncertainty. In response

to filings by the Democratic

Party of Wisconsin, the Demo-

cratic National Committee and

other liberal-leaning groups, a

federal judge on Thursday de-

clined to postpone the elec-

tion. But the judge extended

the deadline for clerks to re-

ceive mailed absentee ballots

by six days to April 13 and

gave voters an extra day, until

Friday, to request absentee

ballots.

He also said that absentee

voters could avoid the require-

ment to have a witness signa-

ture by providing a statement

saying they couldn’t safely ob-

tain one despite reasonable ef-

fortstodoso.

The Republican National

Committee and Republican

Party of Wisconsin filed an

emergency appeal to stay the

judge’s ruling.

Mr. Evers previously asked

the state legislature to relax

the witness requirement and to

extend the time for mailing and

counting ballots. He also

wanted lawmakers to approve

automatically mailing ballots to

all 3.3 million registered voters

in the state. Republican law-

makers said mailing so many

ballots would be unrealistic on

such a timeline and rejected

easing any of the voting rules.

Mr. Sanders on Wednesday

called for the primary to be

delayed. “People should not be

forced to put their lives on the

line to vote,” he said.

Asked if he thought the pri-

mary should proceed, Mr. Bi-

den said Thursday that the de-

cision is up to Wisconsin

officials. “I think you can hold

the election as well, dealing

with mail-in ballots and same-

day registration,” Mr. Biden

said. “There’s a lot of things

that can be done.”

There is a bigger question

surrounding Tuesday’s Wis-

consin primary balloting than

the Democratic presidential

nomination race between Joe

Biden and Bernie Sanders: Can

an election be successfully

held in the midst of a full-

scale pandemic?

Wisconsin’s decision to pro-

ceed, after more than a dozen

other states have delayed their

primaries due to the coronavi-

rus outbreak, has caused re-

quests for absentee ballots to

soar and a scramble to find

BYALEXACORSE

ANDJOHNMCCORMICK

Wisconsin Vote on Tap Next Week

As Absentee-Ballot Requests Surge

Hand sanitizer is given out in Racine, Wis., during early voting. Brenda Jones, below, checks over her absentee ballot in Milwaukee.

FROM TOP: MARK HERTZBERG/ZUMA PRESS; RICK WOOD/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. NEWS

nan declined to comment, as

did a spokesman for Mr. Dur-

ham. In an interview last

month, Mr. Barr said only that

Mr. Durham and his team were

“making good progress on a lot

of fronts.”

That focus has heightened

tensions between investigators

and U.S. intelligence officials.

“There was no political inter-

ference” by Mr. Brennan or any-

one else, said a former senior

intelligence official involved in

preparing the report. A 2004

intelligence overhaul that

added new procedures to “tease

out and highlight” analysts’ dif-

ferences—meant to address

failures that occurred in assess-

ing Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-de-

struction programs in the early

2000s—“worked perfectly,” the

official said. A U.S. official fa-

miliar with the Durham review

and with the compilation of the

report, made public in January

2017, agreed, stressing that its

conclusions have held up under

scrutiny from lawmakers and

intelligence agencies.

Interviews of National Intel-

ligence Council personnel and

others have been aboveboard

and “not adversarial,” focusing

on how the assessment was put

together and the differing view-

points, according to the official

who spoke about them.

The additional outreach for

interviews on various fronts

represents an acceleration in

Mr. Durham’s nearly yearlong

inquiry. Mr. Barr has said he

would like to reach conclusions

by the summer. Mr. Durham

drove to Washington last month

from his home in Connecticut to

keep the probe going full-bore

when flights became scarce be-

cause of the coronavirus.

Intelligence agencies agreed

in 2016 that Russia’s interfer-

ence in the presidential election

was aimed at hurting Demo-

cratic candidate Hillary Clinton

and boosting President Trump’s

election chances. The CIA and

Federal Bureau of Investigation

expressed high confidence in

that assessment, while the Na-

tional Security Agency had

moderate confidence. Those

disagreements have long been

publicly known, and the Repub-

lican-led Senate Intelligence

Committee said in 2018 that

the conflict “appropriately rep-

resents analytic differences”

between the agencies. The com-

mittee’s report also concluded

the Russian efforts were meant

to help Mr. Trump.

Part of the disagreement

was over whether a source the

CIA relied on in the intelligence

assessment, who was close to

the Kremlin, had specific

knowledge that Mr. Putin

wanted to help Mr. Trump, one

person said. Mr. Durham’s team

appears to be pressing people

involved in that report on

whether Mr. Brennan sought to

steer the intelligence commu-

nity agencies to sign on to a

“high confidence” assessment,

people familiar with the matter

said. It couldn’t be determined

whether Mr. Durham has ob-

tained evidence beyond that ac-

cessed by Senate investigators.

Inquiry Into

Campaign

Probe Pushed

sues before the November

election could begin to close.

“The likelihood of any major

legislation passing between

now and the election is basi-

cally nil. It wasn’t great before-

hand,” said Mark Harkins, a for-

mer congressional staffer and

senior fellow at Georgetown’s

Government Affairs Institute.

House Majority Leader

Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) told

House Democrats in a letter

Tuesday that April 20 is the

earliest the House would re-

turn to Washington, writing

that the House may extend

workweeks later in the year

and cancel planned breaks to

make up for lost time.

“In addition to continuing

to respond to the coronavirus

pandemic, we need to handle

the normal annual business of

Congress,” he wrote.

The House left Washington

without renewing expired sur-

veillance powers, alarming cur-

rent and former law-enforce-

ment officials. The Senate and

House Armed Services Commit-

tees have suspended traditional

hearings and markups on the

annual defense authorization

bill, which establishes funding

levels and sets policies for the

Defense Department and Energy

Department’s national security

programs. The House Appropri-

ations Committee will only be-

gin formal hearings on annual

spending legislation when the

House is back in session.

After the end of the third-

ever presidential impeachment

trial, House members and sen-

ators had both been eager to

turn to fresh legislative topics.

The outbreak of Covid-19 has

quickly pitched Congress again

into crisis mode.

“All focus right now is on the

double-barreled nature of the

coronavirus crisis,” said Sen.

John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), the

No. 3 Republican in the Senate.

Both the House and Senate

had been set to consider en-

ergy and climate issues,

though those efforts have been

overtaken by the virus’s

spread. An energy package

aimed at modernizing the

electrical grid and supporting

carbon-free energy sources in

the Senate, which failed to

clear procedural hurdles last

month, is now on hold, accord-

ing to people familiar with the

bill. A House panel dedicated

to studying climate change has

delayed the release of its pol-

icy recommendations because

of the spread of Covid-19.

“It’s about taking care of

your neighbors and saving

lives right now, there will be a

time when we come back to

our climate action plan,” said

Rep. Kathy Castor (D., Fla.),

chairwoman of the House Se-

lect Committee on the Climate

Crisis.

Politically charged investi-

gative efforts have also come

to a standstill. The House Ju-

diciary Committee postponed

a March 31 hearing with Attor-

ney General William Barr, who

was set to face questions

about the Justice Department’s

sentencing of Roger Stone, a

confidant of President Trump.

The GOP-led Senate Home-

land Security and Governmental

Affairs Committee, which is

conducting a probe of Hunter

Biden’s service on the board of a

Ukrainian natural-gas company,

is primarily focused on the cor-

onavirus crisis but will continue

work on the probe long term,

according to a committee aide.

But the prospect of another

round of major coronavirus

legislation has also created op-

portunities for progress on

some policy items. Rep. Dan

Kildee (D., Mich.), a member of

the Ways and Means Commit-

tee, said Congress could take

action on surprise medical bill-

ing as part of the next bill.

“In a period of uncertainty

sometimes it shakes loose

some of the reticence to act,”

he said.

WASHINGTON—The coro-
navirus crisis has brought
much of American life to a halt
in recent weeks. Typical busi-
ness on Capitol Hill has been
no exception, leaving some
critical legislation unfinished.
Lawmakers left Washington
last week after passing a his-
toric $2 trillion relief package,
taking with them the policy
agendas Congress had been set
to tackle this spring. Hearings
on national security have been
postponed, negotiations on en-
ergy policy and surveillance
powers slowed, and oversight
investigations put on hold as
lawmakers have turned their
full attention to the public-
health and economic crisis
consuming the nation.
As discussions begin on an-
other round of coronavirus leg-
islation, lawmakers, aides and
outside experts are acknowl-
edging that the already narrow
window for making progress
on a variety of other policy is-

BYANDREWDUEHREN

Critical Legislation Goes Untouched as Lawmakers Confront Crisis

Members of the House of Representatives walked from the

Capitol last Friday after passing the coronavirus relief package.

SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

can start using general election

dollars to directly confront

President Trump.

Officials said they haven’t

made any determination yet on

the length of the convention or

the format, given the unpredict-

ability of the outbreak.

One person familiar with

planning said the duration is

still expected to be four days,

but that could change later.

“In our current climate of

uncertainty, we believe the

smartest approach is to take ad-

ditional time to monitor how

this situation unfolds so we can

best position our party for a

safe and successful convention,”

said Joe Solmonese, the Demo-

cratic National Convention

Committee’s chief executive.

The new schedule means the

two party conventions will be

scheduled on back-to-back

weeks, with the Democrats go-

ing first. Former Vice President

Joe Biden, the front-runner for

the Democratic nomination, had

expressed doubt that his party

would be able to hold the con-

vention as planned in July.

The DNC said it has con-

firmed that Fiserv Forum, the

home arena of the Milwaukee

Bucks, is available that week, as

are hotels in southern Wiscon-

sin and northern Illinois to ac-

commodate what could be as

many as 50,000 visitors.

“The convention planning

team will now use the coming

weeks to further explore all op-

tions to ensure nominating the

next president of the United

States is done without unneces-

sary risk to public health,” the

DNC said. “These options in-

clude everything from adjusting

the convention’s format to

crowd size and schedule.”

This summer’s Democratic

National Convention in Milwau-

kee is being pushed back to

mid-August because of the cor-

onavirus pandemic, the biggest

disruption yet to the presiden-

tial campaign as a result of the

crisis.

The gathering will now take

place during the week of Aug.

17, the Democratic National

Committee said. That delays by

about a month the date when

the party’s eventual nominee

BYJOHNMCCORMICK

ANDKENTHOMAS

Democratic Convention Delayed a Month

Investigators examining the
beginnings of the 2016 probe
of possible links between the
Trump campaign and Russian
election interference are push-
ing to complete their inquiry
despite the coronavirus pan-
demic.

The former U.K. ambassador
to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood,
who in 2016 alerted the late Re-
publican Sen. John McCain
about related allegations, said
he had been contacted in con-
nection with the probe. “My an-
swer to an enquiry by email
from a member of the team
about 2016 some weeks ago
was that I had nothing to add
to what was already on the
public record,” Mr. Wood said
in an email on Thursday, declin-
ing further comment.
The investigators, led by
Connecticut U.S. Attorney John
Durham, were refused by Brit-
ish authorities earlier this year
when they requested an inter-
view—outside formal, more
time-consuming channels—with
former British spy Christopher
Steele, according to people fa-
miliar with the matter. Mr.
Steele had compiled the related
allegations, some of which were
salacious and have since been
dismissed, in a dossier.
Mr. Durham was tapped last
year by Attorney General Wil-
liam Barr to conduct the re-
view. The probe, according to

people familiar with it, is pro-
ceeding on multiple fronts, ex-
amining the initial surfacing of
the allegations in 2016 as well
as a separate 2017 U.S. intelli-
gence report that concluded
Moscow interfered in the presi-
dential election in part to help
then-candidate Donald Trump.
Mr. Durham’s team began in-
terviews earlier this year at the
Central Intelligence Agency, ac-
cording to people familiar with
the process. It has focused on
people who are or were work-
ing at the National Intelligence
Council, a unit of the Director
of National Intelligence’s office
that coordinated the U.S. intelli-
gence community’s assessment
of Russia’s 2016 election inter-
ference, as well as on individu-
als at other agencies whose
work fed into that assessment,
one official said.
Increasingly, investigators
are focused on former CIA Di-
rector John Brennan, examining
whether he pushed for a
blunter assessment about Rus-
sia’s motivations than others in
the intelligence community felt
was warranted, people familiar
with the matter said.
A spokesman for Mr. Bren-

By Aruna Viswanatha ,

Warren P. Strobel

and Sadie Gurman

Connecticut

U.S. Attorney

John Durham

has been

investigating

the matter for

nearly a year.