House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) is planning to send a criminal referral next week to the Justice Department that will detail “multiple referrals on a number of different crimes,” including leaking classified information, as part of his investigation into misconduct at the Justice Department and the FBI.
“As of now, it’ll be one criminal referral but with multiple referrals on a number of different crimes,” he told Breitbart News on Wednesday in an exclusive interview. “We will have some leakers in there for sure.”
He said on the ending of the Special Counsel investigation, after it found the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, “We knew this was a joke from the beginning, and I’ve said as much for a long time. Basically from the time our report came out, which has been a year. But now, the real work begins. It’s good to not have that sitting out there. But we have to now go on offense and track down all these dirty cops and bad players.”
In addition, Nunes said he plans to interview about 50 people—some who have never been called before Congress—who were involved or know about the pushing of the “pee dossier” within various U.S. government agencies, and its use to get a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Nunes—who took a beating from mainstream news outlets for challenging the Russian collusion narrative—wants to get to the bottom of how it all began, which he said was long before the FBI claims they officially began their investigation of the Trump campaign in late July 2016.
“It all stems from the fact that we know that this investigation started long before the end of July,” he said. “We are quite confident that this investigation started long before they told us that it did.”
He said it reaches all the way to the Obama White House, though it is not yet clear how involved former President Barack Obama was.
“Look, there’s big problems — big problems that the public needs to know about. Maximum transparency is the best thing here,” he said.
Nunes said he believes Barr will have to act on his criminal referral. “There’ll be things in there that cannot be ignored. There will be crimes … so they have to be dealt with,” he said.
He told Fox News on Tuesday he would target “people who lied to Congress, perjury, [and] criminal conspiracy.”
As far as his Democrat colleagues who have not given up on the idea that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, he said, referring to the mythical beast, “These guys are chasing Chupacabra.”
“That really is what they’re looking for … unicorns, the Lochness monster—they’re interchangeable,” he said.
Nunes said the question of whether his Democrat colleague, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), should resign as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, should be directed to Democrat leadership.
“I’ll let our leadership speak to that. My job is to work with whoever is there. At the end of the day, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi makes the decision. But I’ll just say that I think more real journalists need to ask real questions to Team Chupacabra,” he said.
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