A top House Republican said concerns about leaks by Democrats in Congress have been reported to the U.S. intelligence community.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Tuesday that unauthorized disclosures by the other party have become a persistent issue, one that justifies Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s controversial decision to stop in-person election security briefings to lawmakers, which have been criticized by Democrats.
“We know that someone on the Democratic side is a leaker, and they’ve been leaking a really long time, not to mention they also like to go through our telephone numbers and release them to the public,” Nunes said during an interview, making reference to a report by House Democrats during the impeachment investigation into President Trump.
“We’re very concerned about this,” Nunes said about the leaks. “We have relayed those concerns to the intelligence agencies.”
Two days earlier, during an appearance on Fox News, Ratcliffe said he has made multiple “crimes reports” related to leaks of classified information, but it remains unclear who is the subject of these complaints. Ratcliffe is a former Republican congressman from Texas who was a member of the intelligence panel.
Republicans, including Trump, have accused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and other Democrats of leaking intelligence for political gain.
Asked about these claims during a CNN interview on Sunday, Schiff denied that he has ever leaked classified intelligence but declined to say the same for other Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. “I haven’t. My staff hasn’t. I can’t speak for what all the members of the committee have done or not done, including a lot of the Republican members,” the California Democrat said.
Schiff, who stressed that leaks are “always improper, and sometimes, they’re illegal,” also argued that the Trump administration is trying to keep Congress in the dark about election security by doing away with in-person briefings by intelligence officials. He reasoned that even the written intelligence products lawmakers will receive in lieu of briefings can be leaked.
Nunes said Republicans are “fine” with reading intelligence products. “If they continue to send people down to brief us, that stuff is only going to be leaked and politicized,” he added.
But the California Republican called the decision to do away with briefings a “Band-Aid measure” for this election, the run-up to the release of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s report on his review of the Russia investigation, and “before there’s more prosecutions.”
