devin nunes
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., on Sunday said he ignored an invitation by the Justice Department to continue talks Friday with government officials about documents he seeks related to the Russia investigation because he was sure someone at the agency was leaking.

"We're not going to go to another meeting where we don't get documents, and then the meeting leaks out," Nunes said during an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" with Maria Bartiromo.

In recent weeks, Nunes subpoenaed the Justice Department for documents concerning an American who was a confidential intelligence source for Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. The subpoena came after the agency did not reply to a letter asking for details on Mueller's probe. But the DOJ, backed by the White House, did not provide the documents, informing Nunes earlier this month that providing the information would threaten the life of the source and jeopardize national security. Instead he got a briefing with government officials, along with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Though Nunes and Gowdy said they had a "productive" meeting and looked forward to future discussions, Nunes did not respond to an invitation from the DOJ to answer questions he posed last week in a follow-up meeting Friday.

Nunes explained Sunday that he and Gowdy did not accept the invite because they found out they would not be receiving the documents they wanted.

A Justice Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner, "The FBI was prepared to answer his questions last week, but they can't do that if he won't talk to us."

During the Fox News interview, Nunes also said that had they gone, leaks about an supposed FBI informant who had contacts with President Trump's campaign would be pinned on them.

Two reports published Friday evening, one by the New York Times and the other by the Washington Post, describe the informant in question as an American academic who teaches in the United Kingdom and met with up to three members of the Trump campaign to look into their ties to Russia. These include campaign advisers Carter Page, who was surveilled by the government via Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, and George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Mueller's investigation. The FBI reportedly launched its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election after it got word that Papadopoulos learned that the Russians obtained thousands of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails months before WikiLeaks published them.

Both the Times and the Post said they identified the informant, but declined to identify the person heeding concerns of national security officials that the individual's life and the lives his his or her sources would be placed in danger. However, subsequent reporting indicated the informant was a Cambridge University professor.

Trump and his allies have accused this informant of possibly having political motives to hurt his campaign.

Nunes, who has been singled out by Democrats for being an alleged leaker, denied reports that he is seeking information about such an informant in his documents request. But did say if, as reported, the government "ran a spy ring or informant ring and paying people within the Trump campaign -- if any of that is true, that is an absolute red line."