NunesSchiff
© Alex Brandon/KJNHIC chair Adam Schiff • Ranking member HIC Devin Nunes
In April of 2019, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes (R-CA) sent a notification to the Justice Department about eight criminal referrals of individuals who can be blamed for the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Shortly after, on May 1st, Attorney General William Barr announced the Justice Department opened "multiple criminal leak investigations" relating to the handling of the Russia collusion investigation.

Nunes has just revealed that one of the criminal referrals he sent focuses on "whether or not intelligence was manipulated for political purposes." Specifically, Nunes is referring to the 158-page "bipartisan" report the intelligence community put together on alleged Russian election interference in 2017. Nunes refers to the report as "Obama's dossier" and told Fox Business' Lou Dobbs that it was "suspect' the U.S. intelligence community put it together in a matter of several weeks, at the behest of former President Barack Obama."


The 2017 intelligence community report declared its "moderate' to 'high' confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin sought to boost then-candidate Donald Trump's 2016 election chances" reports The Washington Examiner. Representative Nunes not only says all the documents should never have been classified in the first place, hiding "critical information" from the public, but he also plans to send more criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

Nunes says Republicans are eager to fully investigate because Democrats "weaponized" the Mueller report and Steele Dossier. Lou Dobbs asked Nunes if he believes anything will ever come from the criminal referrals, to which Nunes responded, "well that is the million-dollar question" but that he wants the audience to know "house Republicans have not stopped this investigation, so no matter what Pelosi...they can put out phony reports, do phony impeachments, our investigation continues."

Nunes added they have been looking at the "three dossiers" the Steele dossier, Obama's dossier, and the Mueller report, as well as plans to interview three Russian Americans and are looking at making additional criminal referrals. Nunes stated:
"We also need an investigation about why were all these things redacted so long by the Department of Justice and the FBI? Why did we just find out in the last few weeks what was hidden behind the Horowitz reports in the footnotes?... What ticks me off is there was no reason for these to be redacted and I want answers. We still need more declassified. There are too many things hiding from the American public."
We agree.