Ranking member of the House Intel Committee Devin Nunes (R-CA) Thursday sent US Attorney General Bill Barr a criminal referral notification, alleging ‘potential violations’ of the law related to the Trump-Russia investigation.
Nunes said in his letter that he and Congressman John Ratcliffe are prepared to brief Barr on misconduct by FBI and DOJ officials during the bureau’s Trump-Russia investigation.
The criminal referrals stem from the investigation spearheaded by Devin Nunes, an American hero, and other Republicans on the House Intel Committee when the GOP held the majority.
Nunes has been investigating Spygate for over 2 years and he previously said he waited until Bill Barr was confirmed as Attorney General to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
“As part of that investigation, Committee Republicans identified several potential violations of law,” Nunes wrote in his short letter to Barr.
The letter was very short and did not provide any other details.
Screenshot of letter from Nunes to Bill Barr (via Fox News):
Nunes’s letter to Bill Barr comes after the Attorney General told Congressional committees this week that he will be investigating Spygate.
“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016,” Barr said.
“I think spying did occur,” Barr said during a Senate hearing Wednesday. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I am not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated but I need to explore that. I think it’s my obligation… I am not suggesting those rules were violated, but I think it is important to look at that. And I am not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly.
Nunes told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that was he preparing to send 8 criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week concerning leaks of “highly classified material” and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court.
Rep. Nunes explained that the criminal referrals can actually involve more than eight people because a conspiracy referral could involve “a dozen, two dozen people,” and he said more criminal referrals could be on the way.
Nunes added: “There are three [referrals] that I think are more complicated. … So on the first one, is FISA abuse and other matters. We believe there was a conspiracy to lie to the FISA court, mislead the FISA court by numerous individuals that all need to be investigated and looked at that, and we believe the [relevant] statute is the conspiracy statute. The second conspiracy one is involving manipulation of intelligence that also could ensnarl many Americans.”
Among the people who signed the FISA applications include then-FBI Director James Comey, DAG Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates and Andrew McCabe.
“The third is what I would call a global leak referral,” Nunes said. “So there are about a dozen highly sensitive classified information leaks that were given to only a few reporters over the last two-and-a-half-plus years. So you know, we don’t know if there’s actually been any leak investigations that have been opened, but we do believe that we’ve got pretty good information and a pretty good idea of who could be behind these leaks.”
Thanks to Devin Nunes, we may soon find out who leaked General Flynn’s phone calls to Russian Ambassador Kislyak to the media.
No wonder why Brennan, Clapper and Comey are panicking!
