Investigating the investigators
Rep. Devin Nunes is pressing ahead with his inquiry into the Trump-Russia probe.
WASHINGTON — It became known as “the midnight run,” a dark-of-night dash to the White House compound last March 21 by Rep. Devin Nunes to view classified reports two weeks after President Donald Trump’s incendiary claim that President Barack Obama was “tapping my phones” before the 2016 election.
“What I’ve read seems to me to be some level of surveillance activity — perhaps legal, but I don’t know that it’s right,” Nunes, head of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters the next day outside the West Wing. “I don’t know that the American people would be comfortable with what I’ve read.”
The unusual episode did more to embarrass the California Republican than help Trump. No proof of improper eavesdropping ever emerged, and Nunes was forced to step down from his own committee’s inquiry into Russian meddling in the campaign while the House Ethics Committee investigated whether he had disclosed classified information.
But Nunes still used his powerful perch to defend Trump, and he has accelerated those efforts since the ethics panel cleared him of any wrongdoing last month.
While special counsel Robert Mueller conducts a criminal investigation into Trump’s current and former aides, producing charges against four individuals so far, Nunes has launched a counteroffensive aimed at derailing or discrediting the federal probe that has shadowed Trump’s first year in office.
Since last summer, Nunes has issued subpoenas to Justice Department officials, threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress and written angry demands for internal documents that could show how investigators used a notorious dossier of largely unverified allegations concerning Trump’s supposed ties to the Kremlin.
Democrats say Nunes’ focus on the dossier, which was produced by a former British intelligence officer and leaked to the media last year, is a way to divert attention from Russia’s meddling in the election to help Trump.
“What do you think the Department of Justice does?” asked Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration. “It investigates tips they get.”
But Nunes won the backing of House Speaker Paul Ryan during a meeting in Ryan’s office Wednesday with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is Mueller’s supervisor, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In a letter to Rosenstein before the meeting, Nunes had accused Justice and the FBI of “intransigence” for refusing to comply with his subpoenas.
“It seems the (Department of Justice) and FBI need to be investigating themselves,” he wrote in bold, underlined text.
Rosenstein and Wray told Ryan that committee staff members had viewed some of the documents, including internal memos summarizing interviews conducted by FBI agents.
But they were hesitant to provide reports about sensitive contacts with confidential informants, which are rarely turned over to congressional committees.
In the end, Ryan supported Nunes and Rosenstein, and Wray backed down. As a result, committee members will be able to view the documents, which will likely be partly redacted — material that Nunes may use to fuel his counter-probe.
“The speaker always expects the administration to comply with the House’s oversight requests, and he will support his chairmen when they make them,” said AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan.
Nunes isn’t the only Republican targeting the dossier.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Justice Committee, and Lindsey Graham R-S.C., who chairs a Justice subcommittee, on Friday urged the Justice Department to investigate Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, for making what they called “potentially false statements” about his contacts with reporters.
The referral specifically said it “is not intended to be an allegation of a crime,” but it marked the first time Republicans have asked for a criminal probe related to the 2016 campaign.
On Friday, Trump summed up the complaints in a tweet that combined his frustration with the Justice Department and with publication of “Fire and Fury,” a new book that savages the president.
“Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad!” Trump wrote.
Nunes did not respond to requests for an interview.