House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced there is no evidence of communication between President Donald Trump’s team and Russian officials:
“There is no evidence that I’ve been presented [by the intelligence community] of regular contact with anybody in the Trump campaign,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters.“The way it sounds like to me is, it’s been looked into and there’s no evidence of anything there.”
The House Intelligence Committee has taken on the task of investigating any Russian interference with our presidential election.
Nunes stated that the committee has only decided the scope of the investigation, but will continue to receive evidence:
“As of right now, I don’t have any evidence of any phone calls. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I don’t have that,” he reiterated. “What I’ve been told, by many folks, is that there’s nothing there — but we’re absolutely looking into it.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged interference. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has also asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “recuse himself from any FBI investigation into Trump campaign ties to Russia.” Nunes has dismissed both ideas:
“At this point, what are we going to appoint a special prosecutor to do, exactly? Chase stories of American citizens that end up in newspaper articles?” he said, adding that if there was any evidence of serious crime, the committee would “consider” the need for an independent prosecutor.
Nunes told reporters that the committee has evidence of one serious crime: the leaks to the media, “apparently from the intelligence community.” These leaks include a phone call between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyac:
Nunes on Monday said he was “very interested” in who made the decision to expose the contents of the intercepted phone call to the media.“What laws did they use to decide to unmask Flynn’s name?” he said.In discussing the concerns over the leak, Nunes appeared to reveal the mechanism by which the government was able to legally surveil Flynn, a U.S. citizen, something that has been speculated about since the transcripts were leaked.
Nunes said the calls fell under “FISA-warranted communications” and that “Flynn’s side of the conversation was captured inadvertently.” But officials may keep “communications by U.S. citizens that are ‘inadvertently’ intercepted in the material contains foreign intelligence or evidence of crime” under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act:
“The good thing is about FISA and the way it works, there should be a record of who in the government knew about Gen. Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador and from there we should be able to know who’s in the realm of the possibles of who we would need to talk to,” Nunes said Monday.
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