The Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) report last week threw cold water on many Democrat talking points regarding the FBI and the investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
Media outlets have even had to admit that even though they consistently sided with Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) claims about the investigation, it was Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) who got most of the facts right. Taking a victory lap, Nunes wrote a letter on Friday to Schiff, who is the current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“After publishing false conclusions of such enormity on a topic directly within this committee’s oversight responsibilities, it is clear you are in need of rehabilitation, and I hope this letter will serve as the first step in that vital process,” Nunes wrote to Schiff.
Nunes went on to outline a small sample of the falsehoods Schiff spread regarding the FBI’s investigation into the 2016 election:
FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
The DOJ “made only narrow use of information from [Christopher] Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”
In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele’s reporting.
The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence.”
“Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”
The FBI conducted a “rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
Steele’s prior reporting was used in criminal proceedings.
All of these claims turned out to be false according to the IG.
Schiff also took the incredible step of reading from the Steele dossier during a congressional hearing, placing many of the dossier’s most salacious claims, most of which were undermined by the IG report.
Nunes also slammed Schiff for expressing his faith that the FBI will handle the “issues and errors” the IG found.
“This makes it clear your rehabilitation will be a long, arduous process. As previously noted, this committee is responsible for overseeing the Intelligence Community and exposing abuses. Yet when the IG identified gross abuses in our jurisdiction, you expressed full faith in the agencies we’re supposed to be vigilantly monitoring, and you rejected any oversight whatsoever of their supposed clean-up efforts,” Nunes wrote. “If agencies with a documented, severe abuse problem should be trusted to police themselves, then it’s fair to ask why this committee even exists and what we’re supposed to be doing, if anything, aside from being exploited by you as a launching pad to impeach the president for issues that have no intelligence component at all.”
For his part, Schiff on Sunday acknowledged that the FBI committed “serious abuses” when it sought FISA warrants against one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The California Democrat, however, refused to admit that he was wrong to defend the FBI’s FISA process, claiming he was “unaware” of the abuses, even though House Republicans had been pointing them out for nearly three years.