Rep Schiff, Sen Feinstein are demanding to know if Russian trolls or bots have tried to ‘manipulate public opinion’ on Facebook and Twitter again

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are calling on Twitter and Facebook to launch investigations of potential Russian-linked accounts pushing for the release of a controversial congressional memo. Rep Schiff and Sen Feinstein sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking that they “provide a public report to Congress and the American public by January 26” on the matter.

The memo in question was drafted by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and is believed by some Republicans to show political bias in the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.  For weeks, Republicans have sought to call attention to a secret dossier they compiled that details abuses of power at the FBI — an effort that Democrats say is merely an attempt to discredit an investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. Rep Schiff and Sen Feinstein in their letter cited data by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, which found that Russian bots on Twitter were advocating for legislators to make the memo public.