Video: Nunes: DOJ or FBI Is Leaking About Informant, So ‘Show Us the Information’
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com
House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes said he still has not received "specific documents" from the Justice Department about an alleged FBI informant who reportedly met with two or three members of the Trump campaign.
“They continue to leak out things about this informant,” Nunes told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
“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 is, give us the documentation that you used to start this investigation."
Nunes noted that the Steele dossier -- opposition research paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign -- was used to get a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. "So we're trying to get to the bottom of, you know, what else was used in that FISA, because you have many people in the Department of Justice who claim that we're wrong (that the Steele dossier was the sole basis for the warrant). So, if we're wrong, show us the information,” Nunes said.
Former FBI Director Jim Comey recently told Fox News's Bret Baier that the FISA warrant did not depend solely on the unverified, salacious Steele dossier. Comey said he recollects that the FISA warrant stemmed from a "broader mosaic of facts that were laid before the FISA judge."
“Yeah, we're looking for the pieces of Mr. Comey and the FBI's mosaic," Nunes said. "We have a right to get the information, if James Comey and many others…people that are currently at the Department of Justice today continue to say there is nothing to see here. Well, if there's nothing to see here, show us the documents that we're asking for. And they refuse to do it.”
Nunes said someone at the Justice Department or FBI continues to "leak" following Nunes' and Rep. Trey Gowdy’s recent meeting at the Justice Department to discuss the documents they want to see.
"We're not going to go to another meeting where we don't get documents and then the meeting leaks out,” Nunes said. “And this should make people very suspicious. 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.
“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. Now, Had Mr. Gowdy and I went to that meeting, you can bet they would have tried to pin that on us.”
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post reported on Friday night that the FBI used a retired American professor to interact with several Trump campaign officials as part of the FBI's Trump-Russia probe. Neither newspaper named the person they described as an "informant" (not a spy), saying that to name him might endanger him or his connections.
Nunes noted that both newspaper reports had "lots and lots and lots of details."
"So remember, we don't have any documents, we can't confirm whether there's an informant or not an informant because we've never been told, nor given documents, and in fact, we've never asked for the name of any informants or any sources whatsoever. So 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,” Nunes said.
“There is not an honest person in this country who can believe that taxpayer dollars going to fund this ring and operate like this...if any of that is true -- that's a red line in this country. You can't do this to political campaigns. This was done, I mean, according to them, this was done in the spring, I mean, before the counter-intelligence investigation was even opened. If that's true, we need to know about it.”
According to the New York Times, “FBI agents sent an informant to talk to two (Trump) campaign advisers (George Papadopoulos and Carter Page) only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign.”
