Nunes Urges Schiff to Accept the IG’s Findings on FBI FISA Abuses: ‘You Are in Need of Rehabilitation’
Ranking House Intelligence Committee Republican Devin Nunes rebuked committee chairman Adam Schiff in a Sunday letter, telling Schiff he is “in need of rehabilitation” if he is to fully accept the Justice Department’s inspector general report detailing the FISA abuses committed by the FBI during their Russia probe.
“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 in a Sunday letter.
After originally dismissing Nunes’s concerns about the warrant process, Schiff admitted that the FBI committed significant errors in its application to the FISA court to surveil Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page.
“FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the [FISA] process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign,” Schiff wrote in a memo last year, adding a claim that the warrant applications “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources.”
However, the inspector general’s report documented 17 “significant errors and omissions” in the process and said the FBI failed to inform the FISA court about the partisan origins of the Steele dossier, which they also failed to independently corroborate.
On Sunday, Schiff said he “certainly accepts” that “the inspector general found things that we didn’t know 2 years ago.”
Nunes commended Schiff for that acknowledgement, calling it “a valuable first step—a baby step, but a step nonetheless—in your rehabilitation.”
“As part of your rehabilitation, it’s crucial that you admit you have a problem—you are hijacking the Intelligence Committee for political purposes while excusing and covering up intelligence agency abuses,” Nunes wrote. “Rehabilitation will be a long, arduous process.”
The intelligence committee held an impeachment hearing last week and the lower chamber is expected to hold a full House vote this week to impeach President Trump over accusations that he engaged in a quid pro quo involving temporarily withheld U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Trump is accused of witholding the aid to coerce Ukrainian officials to announce the opening of a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
