Congressional Republicans have a “number” of investigations in play in an effort to uncover more secrets in the so-called Russiagate scandal.
California Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, gave a sneak peek into what comes next after the declassification of footnotes in a Justice Department inspector general report on the FBI’s Russia investigation.
“We have a number of things that we are investigating right now,” the lawmaker told conservative commentator and former CIA analyst Buck Sexton on his daily podcast, which went live on Thursday.
Republicans seek additional information related to “leaks” and instances when officials may have “misled” Congress, Nunes said. He confirmed these will be the subject of additional criminal referrals to the Justice Department, which he teased over the weekend.
Nunes declined to go into further specifics, but earlier in the interview, he noted how “dirty cops” in the FBI declined to inform Congress about warnings that British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier was likely influenced by Russian disinformation, as was revealed in the newly declassified footnotes of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“They hid it all,” Nunes said.
One significant area of concern for Republicans is how a short summary of Steele’s unverified research, which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm, made it into an appendix in the 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference.
That report, released in the waning days of the Obama administration, assessed with “moderate” to “high” confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin sought to boost Trump’s 2016 election chances.
The previously redacted footnotes in the DOJ watchdog report were made public at the request of Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who on Thursday wrote to the FBI director seeking additional Crossfire Hurricane records.
U.S. Attorney John Durham, at the behest of Attorney General William Barr, is conducting a review of possible misconduct by federal law enforcement and intelligence officials during the Russia investigation and is said to be increasingly focused on former CIA Director John Brennan.
Democrats have criticized Durham’s review as a politically motivated scheme to undermine the work of special counsel Robert Mueller and attack Trump’s perceived enemies, but Nunes believes Mueller’s team may have tried to “trap” Trump with obstruction of justice.
Asked about the prospect of there being criminal charges, Nunes said, “I sure hope so.”
“Hopefully, these dirty cops will be locked up for a really long time,” he said.
