Nunes: Possibly More Than 1 FBI Informant in Trump Campaign
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Sunday that the full extent of the FBI’s snooping on then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has yet to be revealed.
News accounts in the past week have said that the FBI used one of its informants to gather information from at least three Trump campaign advisers.
Citing sources it did not name, The New York Times reported that the mission of the FBI informant was to ascertain any possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.
However, speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News, Nunes said that the FBI has stonewalled requests that could prove if there were more informants.
“We asked for specific documents that we have still not received from the Department of Justice,” the California Republican said
“So they continue to leak out things about this informant, and we don’t know if there’s one informant or more informants because there’s so much out there now. It’s really getting tough to follow, and all we’re asking for is give us the documentation that you used to start this investigation,” he said.
Nunes said that the FBI could well have over-reached itself if it intruded into the Trump campaign.
“If any of that is true – if they ran a spy ring or an informant ring and they were paying people within the Trump campaign — if any of that is true, that is an absolute red line … You can’t do this to political campaigns,” Nunes said.
“I mean, there is no possible way that we should be allowing, even if it was legal, we should never allow this in this country,” he said. “Congress should not allow for anything like this to ever occur again to any political campaign, if it in fact happened.”
Nunes also said that information about the informant was leaked to the media from within the Justice Department, which had invited Nunes and GOP Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina to a meeting on Friday.
Nunes and Gowdy did not attend because they were suspicious after information from another meeting had been leaked to the media.
“They were trying to get Mr. Gowdy and I to go on Friday to the Department of Justice for supposedly another briefing. We said, ‘Look, unless we’re going to get documents’ — we found out Thursday night they were not going to provide documents, so therefore we’re not going to go,” Nunes said.
“Now, if you look what happened on Friday night, probably the mother of all leaks of all time to two major newspapers that came out late Friday night,” he said. “Now had Mr. Gowdy and I went to that meeting, you can bet they would have tried to pin that on us.”
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise also appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” and had harsh words for the FBI, The Hill reported.
“The FBI needs to get their house back in order. They need to stop running around on witch hunts and focus on their main objectives and that’s helping keep our country safe,” the Louisiana Republican said.
He said he understands the frustration Nunes and Gowdy are experiencing.
“They can’t get the right documents from the FBI, yet every conversation they have is leaked out like a sieve,” Scalise said.
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