By PoliZette Staff | April 17, 2019
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke exclusively with host Laura Ingraham of Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Tuesday night about the eight criminal referrals he sent to Attorney General William Barr last week, alleging multiple violations during Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into alleged collusion.
“The referrals include conspiracy, go beyond the eight individuals, and will look at the Steele dossier’s origins,” noted Ingraham on Tuesday night at the start of the segment, citing sources “familiar with the matter.”
The referrals stem from the investigation conducted by the House Intel Committee when Republicans held the majority in the House.
“As part of that investigation, Committee Republicans identified several potential violations of law,” Nunes wrote in his letter to Barr last Thursday.
That notification came after Barr told Congress he is reviewing the “conduct” of the original FBI investigation. During the second of two appearances on Capitol Hill last week, Barr said he believed that “spying did occur” — and the question was “whether it was adequately predicated,” as Fox News and other outlets reported.
Related: Barr’s Belief: ‘Spying Did Occur’ on Trump During the 2016 Campaign
Nunes told Ingraham that what he’s looking for is the following: “There are three specific areas where I think there was some type of set-up involved. So the first is involved with General [Michael] Flynn. General Flynn [former national security adviser] was supposedly entrapped — was meeting with a Russian woman. I want to know what really happened there, because we’re just now finding out about this, and we need more, a lot more information, on what really General Flynn [was] doing, because it’s a big deal.”
He added, “If somebody within our intelligence agencies [was] accusing a three-star general of having some type of Russian fling, it’s serious stuff, and I want to get to the bottom of that.”
The second “big question you have,” said Nunes, is with “Joseph Mifsud, [and] how this whole investigation started. And let me tell you, Mueller describes him as some type of Russian asset of some kind. Well, 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. So that’s something we also want to know about. And Mifsud was the guy who set up Papadopoulos.”
Mifsud, a European professor, was one of the FBI’s primary sources in the Papadopoulos case, as John Solomon at The Hill has noted in his reporting on the case.
“Finally,” added Nunes, “the third issue I [want to] know about is this infamous Trump Tower meeting. When you hear the Democrats talk about that there’s evidence in plain sight, well, the Russians that are involved in the Trump Tower — the infamous Trump Tower meeting in New York — I call them the Fusion GPS Russians.”
“There is no evidence whatsoever of collusion. They tried to frame [Trump] on obstruction of justice, and they didn’t get him on that either, even though they tried.”
“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 that 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.”
Republicans have pushed for the release of key documents that would show the origins of the charges that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.
Nunes also told Ingraham, “Whatever happens on Thursday [when the redacted Mueller report is released], [President] Donald Trump is a free man. There is no evidence whatsoever of collusion. They tried to frame him on obstruction of justice, and they didn’t get him on that either, even though they tried.”
Related: Redacted Mueller Report to Be Released on Thursday
He added, “[Yet] the Democrats in Congress are going to continue to try to investigate — and my guess is that their friends in the media will play a part in it.”
He also said that he hoped there wasn’t a “leak problem” with the redacted Mueller report.
This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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