House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday he hadn’t heard at the time that FBI agents had tipped off committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) about finding Clinton emails on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
“This is the first that we’ve heard about it,” Schiff told NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd.
The revelation that Weiner’s laptop contained emails of Clinton’s, and that the FBI would reopen its investigation into Clinton’s private email server in order to look into them, rocked the 2016 presidential campaign days before the election. The emails were ultimately deemed irrelevant to the investigation two days before Election Day.
On Friday, Nunes told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham “we had whistle blowers that came to us in late September of 2016, who talked to us about this laptop sitting up in New York that had additional emails on it. The House Intelligence Committee, we had that, but we couldn’t do anything with it.”
“Good FBI agents brought this to our attention, but what could we do with it?” he added.
It’s unclear who Nunes meant when he said “the House Intelligence Committee, we had that.” Schiff, for one, said Sunday he wasn’t told about the leak.
“It is deeply disturbing, because if this was shared by New York field agents with Devin Nunes, was it also shared with Rudy Giuliani?” he said. “Or did Devin Nunes do something which we have seen subsequently, which is coordinate with the Trump team? Was this information shared by the committee with Rudy Giuliani, or shared directly with him?”
“We don’t know the answer, but we hope the inspector general will find out.”
Watch below:
Schiff: This is the first we heard about the “good FBI agents” leaking laptop info to Devin Nunes. https://t.co/g5M7dkwYzt pic.twitter.com/9FV5N7jBsM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 17, 2018
If would have been bigger news if he had.
“It is deeply disturbing, because if this was shared by New York field agents with Devin Nunes, was it also shared with Rudy Giuliani?” he said. “Or did Devin Nunes do something which we have seen subsequently, which is coordinate with the Trump team? Was this information shared by the committee with Rudy Giuliani, or shared directly with him?”
“We don’t know the answer, but we hope the inspector general will find out.”
Did Schiff end that with a deep, malevolent laugh?
A neatly executed stiletto, Adam.
This was not “whistleblowing” and these were not “good FBI agents”, involving themselves in a pernicious way days before the election in order to influence its outcome.
At the very least, Nunes needs to be investigated by either Mueller or the DoJ IG. This entire scenario stinks to high heaven. And let’s not forget Nunes was placed onto the Trump transition team shortly after. I wonder why and what else he may have done.