The House intelligence Committee has ended its probe into Russian collusion, and it is now investigating what Chairman Devin Nunes calls “FISA abuse and other matters.”
In a phone call to “Fox & Friends” on Sunday morning, Nunes said as part of that FISA investigation, he sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions two weeks ago, and “per usual, it was ignored. Not acknowledged — completely ignored,” Nunes said.
“So last week we sent a subpoena. And then on Thursday we discovered that they are not going to comply with our subpoena of very important information that we need. The only thing left that we can do is, we have to move quickly to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt. And that’s what I’m going to press for this week.”
Nunes said the information his committee is seeking is classified.
“And this is the problem with a lot of this investigation. Look, because of the way they conducted the investigation, most of this information is classified. But because this is so important, I’m not going to take any excuse to say, oh, we’re harming national security. How many times have we heard that argument throughout this entire investigation?
“You know, we’ve had to take people to court to get the information. You know, we shouldn’t have had to take Fusion GPS to court in order to find out that the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign had paid for dirty dossier. Remember, the dirt that was used to get the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign?
“We shouldn’t have had to do that, and so we’re just not going to take this nonsense of every time we peel something back; every time we need information, we get ignored, we get stalled, we get stonewalled. And then, lo and behold, we get accused of, we’re going to destroy the nation’s ability to keep it secure.”
Nunes said the next step is to go to court this week in attempt to enforce the subpoena.
“So we’ve been in discussions over the weekend with our general counsel for the United States Congress. Now remember, we did this with Lois Learner and we did this also with Attorney General Holder. But I think this is going to be a much different case, where I can’t imagine that the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is going to defend not providing pertinent documents, very important documents, to Congress.”
Nunes said he doesn’t even know if Sessions is aware of the committee’s latest request for classified information.
“I think we need to talk to the attorney general, make sure he understands the significance of this request. I have already talked to the director of the FBI that we need this request. So this just can’t continue where we don’t get information in a timely manner. And like I said, everything we’ve tried to get they tried to stop us from getting.”
In an interview with Fox News in February, Nunes expressed concern about secret courts granting secret warrants, based on opposition research, to spy on American citizens:
“I think the American people understand that the FBI should not go to secret courts using information that was paid for by the Democrats to open up investigations to get warrants on people of the other political party. That’s the type of stuff that happens in the banana republic,” Nunes said at the time.
Later in February, Nunes sent a questionnaire to current and former administration officials, asking them “ten simple questions” relating to the Steele dossier, an opposition research document paid for by the Democrat Party and the Clinton campaign.
The questions included this one: “When did you first become aware that the Steele dossier was used to obtain a FISA order on Carter Page?”
Two weeks ago, Nunes said the FBI began its investigation into alleged Trump-Russia coordination without any official intelligence communication.
“We now know there was no official intelligence that was used to start this investigation,” Nunes told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on April 22. Nunes said “major irregularities” at the Obama State Department — information funneled through unofficial channels — may have prompted the FBI’s probe.
(Courtesy of CNSNews.com)
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