Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tuesday evening that examples will soon be released of contentious behavior from those working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Nunes made the remarks to Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, The Washington Examiner (my former employer) reported. Nunes said the exorbitant sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, former associate of President Donald Trump, would not “be the only example” of what really went on during the Mueller investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 campaign (hint: it didn’t).
“There’s more to come on this,” Nunes told Dobbs. The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee added that the prosecutors behind the lengthy sentencing recommendation for Stone all resigned and a shorter sentence was recommended in a new court filing.
“We think there’s other examples of things that they did during the Mueller investigation that I think you and your listeners and the American people will be very interested to learn in the coming weeks as we start to unpeel the onion of what the Mueller team was really doing,” Nunes said.
As the Examiner’s Daniel Chaitin reported, Nunes “did not share any specifics, but the origins of the Russia investigation are being reviewed by Attorney General William Barr’s hand-picked prosecutor from Connecticut, John Durham.”
“The case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn recently took a wild turn, with the former White House national security adviser seeking to withdraw his guilty plea on a charge of lying to the FBI and the Justice Department changing its position on a recommended sentence,” Chaitlin added.
While the Mueller investigation took place, several members of Trump’s campaign orbit were charged with crimes, yet none of those crimes had to do with Russian collusion. Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI even though he didn’t commit an underlying crime. Stone was charged with lying and witness intimidation. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged with various crimes relating to his lobbying career before working with Trump.
Nunes also told Dobbs that Stone should never have been in Mueller’s crosshairs.
“So, what the hell did they do for two years?” Nunes said.
“They set up an obstruction of justice trap, and they went after a whole bunch of people that now got sentenced. Some already served their time, and I think all of this has to come into question now,” the congressman added.
In December, the Department of Justice Inspector General released a report into the origins of the special counsel investigation, finding the FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) by omitting or submitting errors in the bureau’s warrant applications against Carter Page, a former advisor to the Trump campaign. The FBI ignored context surrounding the dossier created by ex-British Intelligence officer Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC. The FBI also ignored the fact that Page had perfectly legitimate reasons to have contact with certain Russian officials – because he had formerly worked with the CIA on Russian matters.