CNN’s Chris Cuomo accused House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., of having “no shame” after Nunes said special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report “ignored a wide range of abuses committed during the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.”
“No shame in his game. He knows Page was looked at for legit reasons even before the election; that questions mueller looked at were legit,” Cuomo tweeted Thursday. “Then the former chair who overtly worked with wh claims to be against abuse of process for political ends but wants to go after fbi? Come on!”
Cuomo was referencing the FBI’s surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. FBI informant Stephen Halper was instructed to collect information on Page during the 2016 election cycle. According to a House Intelligence Committee memo from 2018 when Nunes was chairman of the panel, the FBI and Justice Department used information from the salacious and so-called “Trump dossier” to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application to spy on Page.
The dossier, which was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, primarily contains unverified information outlining Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
Nunes also stepped aside from leading one of the House investigations looking at Trump’s connections to Russia due to a reported visit to the White House in March 2017 to discuss raw intelligence information suggesting law enforcement agencies conducted surveillance on Trump transition team members. The House Ethics Committee later cleared him of any impropriety after an investigation prompted by groups including the left-leaning MoveOn.org.
Nunes claimed Thursday that “it’s clear that false allegations from the Steele dossier played a major role not only in the FISA warrant application on Page, but in the appointment of the Special Counsel as well.”
“The biggest takeaway from the entire Russia hoax is that our nation’s counter-intelligence capabilities should never again be abused to target an administration’s political opponents,” Nunes said in a statement. “Those who colluded in this effort — the media, Fusion GPS, Democratic Party leaders in Congress, the Clinton campaign, and partisan intelligence leaders — should apologize to the innocent people they maligned and to the American people they deceived.”
Mueller was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. A redacted version of the report was released Thursday.
