The House Intelligence Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, has a tall list of people he still wants to interview about the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton, and the Russian interference.
The list of 32 names has been submitted to the Democratic majority of the panel, and includes the likes of Sidney Blumenthal, a key Clinton ally, former Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan, and Robby Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman.
Nunes said Sunday it is imperative to speak with them because of their ties to the infamous Trump dossier, which contained compromising, yet unverified claims about President Trump’s ties to Russia. Compiled in 2016, the research effort was conducted by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and was funded in part by Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
“Why would people in the Clinton campaign be tweeting out messages about [President] Trump’s involvement with Russia? It’s because they had the dossier,” Nunes said during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They were promoting this message, this dirt, out there in 2016, and we need to ask these Clinton campaign people where they got it from. Did they get it from Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS the dossier they were paying for or do they get it from some Russian friends?”
The list, which also includes Simpson, stems from an exhaustive roll of names Nunes sent to a GOP task force of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committee’s last year, which included Clinton allies, current and former Justice Department and FBI officials connected to the Russia investigation, as well as people who served in the White House or State Department under the Obama administration. There were roughly 42 names in all.
“These names are all-important because we need to know if these people were involved in the chain of custody of the dossier,” Nunes said. “The dossier makes claims that this information came from Russians, so all the names that are on this list that we didn’t get to last year that still need to be interviewed if we’re really looking for Russian collusion we need to know if any of those people were actually talking to Russians on behalf of the Clinton campaign or any other operative.”
Nunes was doubtful that his list would make any headway with Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in charge of the House Intelligence Committee, but suggested there were other ways to proceed with the investigation, even if it goes out of his hands.
“They claim they’re going to give us witnesses so far they’ve given us zero witnesses,” Nunes said of the Democrats. “If they continue not to give us any witnesses we will ask all of these people to voluntarily come into Congress to talk to us. If they won’t come in, we will either do it through the courts or we will send it over to the Senate and hope that Lindsey Graham and his team get to bottom of it.”
Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, who was anchoring the show, noted that Graham, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has indicated a willingness to help out the GOP minority in House in their investigative endeavors.
The list, provided to the Washington Examiner, also includes Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias, who represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC and took up funding anti-Trump research from Fusion GPS after the conservative publication the Washington Free Beacon withdrew its funding.
Nunes has also pinned high hopes on new Attorney General William Barr to not only clear the Justice Department and FBI for alleged bias at their highest levels, regarding which he is expected to make several criminal referrals in the near future, but also for the sake of transparency in terms of document requests.
Steele’s dossier remains a leading issue for Republicans. Last year, Republicans from the House Intelligence Committee put together a memo that accused the FBI and the Justice Department of obtaining surveillance warrants to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, by using the dossier, but failing to present key information, including its author’s anti-Trump bias and Democratic benefactors, to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Democrats argued in a rebuttal memo that the FISA process was not abused and the GOP allegations are meant to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The dossier took a major credibility hit last week when former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified to the House Oversight Committee that one of its key assertions, that he took a trip to Europe ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign to talk with Russian officials, was untrue. “I’ve never been to Prague,” Cohen said.
More revelations about the dossier are poised to be unveiled soon. Last week a a federal judge ruled depositions given by Steele and David Kramer, a longtime associate of John McCain, must be unsealed. The pair gave testimony in a lawsuit brought against BuzzFeed in December 2018 by a Russian Internet entrepreneur. BuzzFeed published the dossier in January 2017.
