Devin Nunes looking for ‘some type of setup’ in 3 areas of Mueller’s report

“What I’m going to be looking for is there’s three specific areas where I think there was some type of setup involved,” Nunes said.

“The first is involved with Gen. Flynn,” Nunes said. “Gen. Flynn was supposedly entrapped, was meeting with a Russian woman. I want to know what really happened there because we are just now finding out about this and we need a lot more information on what really was general Flynn doing. It’s a big deal if somebody within our intelligence agencies were accusing a three star general of having some type of Russian fling. It’s serious stuff. I want to get to the bottom of that.”

Nunes appeared to be referring to Flynn meeting Russian-British graduate student Svetlana Lokhova during a trip to the University of Cambridge in 2014. Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. Reports came out in 2017 that said spy officials had concerns about Flynn’s ties to Russians, including his encounter with Lokhova. Flynn’s spokesman said the meeting was “incidental” and Lokhova told Fox News last year she is “not a Russia spy” and said she believes Flynn “was targeted and I was used to do it.”

The dinner at which they met was set up by a United Kingdom academic group that included Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who was sent to make contact with members of President Trump’s campaign.

Flynn was pushed out as Trump’s national security adviser in February 2017 and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian envoy. Afterwards he cooperated with Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“The second big question is Joseph Mifsud,” Nunes continued, referring to the man who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

“Joseph Mifsud is how this whole investigation started,” Nunes said. “Mueller describes him as some type of Russian asset of some kind. If Joseph Mifsud was a Russian asset, we’ve got big problems with our British and Italian allies because he seems to be pictured with every British and Italian person that we know of. That is something that we also want to know about. And Mifsud was the guy who set up Papadopoulos.”

The FBI launched its original Russia investigation in July 2016, prompted by Australian diplomat Alexander Downer informing the FBI that Papadopoulos told him Russia had stolen emails related to Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2016 election.

The third key area of interest, Nunes said, is the Trump Tower meeting between members of Trump’s inner circle, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, an attorney with ties to the Kremlin who had predicated the meetup with the promise of dirt on Clinton. Nunes said opposition research firm Fusion GPS had very suspicious activity surrounding the June 2016 meeting.

“When you hear the Democrats talk about that there’s ‘evidence in plain sight,’ the Russians that are involved in the infamous Trump Tower meeting in New York, I call them the Fusion GPS Russians,” Nunes said. “Fusion GPS was the company that was working for the Clinton campaign and the Democrats and somehow Glenn Simpson meets with them before and after and he’s actually, these are Russians he’s doing work for? I mean come on. If Mueller can’t get to the bottom of this and answer this for the American people, I don’t know what the report was really worth.”

Fusion GPS hired British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who created the so-called Trump dossier filled with unverified claims about Trump’s compromising ties to Russia. Republicans such as Nunes have alleged the FBI misled the FISA court to obtain warrants to spy on onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page by using the dossier without mentioning its Democratic benefactors and Steele’s anti-Trump bias.

Mueller concluded his investigation last month, issuing a nearly 400-page report to Attorney General William Barr on his findings. Barr intends to release a redacted version of the full report on Thursday.

Nunes, who like many of his Democratic colleagues wants to see the full Mueller report and the underlying evidence, expressed concern Tuesday about politically motivated leaks about the information that is redacted. Some top GOP lawmakers have accused the special counsel’s team of providing evidence without necessary context, citing Mueller’s “selective” use of emails in court filings, allowing Democrats and other critics of the president to spin the media narrative in their favor.

Nunes suggested to Ingraham the Gang of Eight, which includes the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate along with the top members of the intelligence committees, could gain access to the full report. He also said if all the “serious unanswered questions” aren’t answered in Mueller’s report, he hopes Barr “is going to get us those answers.”

Last week, Nunes sent a notification letter to Barr saying his team “identified several potential violations of the law” as part of an investigation into origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and hopes to set up a meeting to discuss eight criminal referrals.

Nunes’ criminal referrals, which include two related to charges of conspiracy to lie to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, came together as Mueller concluded his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Although Barr said in a summary that Mueller’s team could not establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia, some Democrats, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., insist there is “evidence in plain sight” of Trump-Russia collusion.

According to Ingraham, Fox News sources said the referrals “include conspiracy, go beyond the eight individuals, and will look at the Steele dossier’s origins.”

Meanwhile, House Democrats are sounding the alarm over plans by Nunes to meet privately with Barr to discuss the criminal referrals.