Today Rep. Devin Nunes, Republican from California and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, announced he is ready to send eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department and the Attorney General. He has been teasing such referrals for months, but said that there were delays as investigators kept coming up with more individuals who may be involved in the crimes. This week he expects to pass the information that has been uncovered to the DOJ.
This dramatic and welcome development comes with Republicans forcefully pushing for release of documents that can shed light on the origin and spread of the Trump-Russia hoax. The President recently stated that he would release all of the FBI FISA applications aimed at surveilling one of his aides, as well as other documents.
Appearing on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Nunes talked about alleged misconduct during the Trump collusion imbroglio. He said that the referrals will be for leaks of classified information to the media, for manipulating intelligence, and for misleading FISA court judges with regard to the largely debunked Steele dossier.
Nunes was not about to reveal names of Obama officials involved in the referrals, but he did state that there are five government officials he believes lied to or misled Congress or leaked classified material.
Indicating he has been working on the referrals investigation for more than two years, Nunes said that, as time drew near when he was ready, he decided to wait for the confirmation of Attorney General William Barr.
“We’re prepared this week to notify the attorney general that we’re prepared to send those referrals over,” Nunes said. “First of all, all of these are classified or sensitive … Five of them are what I would call straight-up referrals–so just referrals that name someone and name the specific crimes. Those crimes are lying to Congress, misleading Congress, leaking classified information. So five of them are those types.”
“There are three (referrals) that I think are more complicated,” he added. So on the first one, is FISA abuse and other matters. We believe there was a conspiracy to lie to the FISA court, mislead the FISA court by numerous individuals that all need to be investigated and looked at that, and we believe the (pertinent) statute is the conspiracy statute. The second conspiracy one is involving manipulation of ...
