The group was born out of frustration over the Justice Department's refusal to explain how it used a disputed dossier.
A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans.
A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee's high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven't informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House's general counsel.
The people familiar with Nunes' plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence.
That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign — or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded. (The president has said he is not currently considering firing Mueller.)
Republicans in the Nunes-led group suspect the FBI and DOJ have worked either to hurt Trump or aid his former campaign rival Hillary Clinton, a sense that has pervaded parts of the president's inner circle. Trump has long called the investigations into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election a "witch hunt," and on Tuesday, his son Donald Trump Jr. told a crowd in Florida the probes were part of a "rigged system" by "people at the highest levels of government" who were working to hurt the president.
The group is relying on the same documents and testimony provided by top Obama administration officials — such as former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former attorney general Loretta Lynch and former UN ambassador Samantha Power — who were grilled as part of the intelligence committee's broader Russia probe.
It's unclear how many members of the intelligence committee are participating in the side effort. Lawmakers on the full committee interviewed by POLITICO refused to discuss it.
"I don't talk about what we do behind closed doors," said Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who's leading the intelligence committee's bipartisan Russia probe. "I'm not going to talk about that," said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), another member of the panel.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/20/house-republicans-quietly-investigate-doj-fbi-310121Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he wasn't aware of the Nunes effort but said it fit with what he sees as an increasingly destructive bent in Republicans' rhetoric and actions.
"I think what we are seeing in our committee ... is an effort to attack the Department of Justice, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller, is an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they'll find and try to discredit them in advance," he said. "It's a pernicious thing to do that will ultimately inflict long-term damage on these institutions."
The Nunes-led group is the latest evidence of an increasingly toxic and bruising confrontation between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the highest ranks of the justice system. Some Hill Republicans are irate about the Justice Department's refusal to provide more details about its investigation of Trump associates' ties to Russia. They're also frothing over the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia dossier, which GOP lawmakers have openly mocked as "discredited" and "disproven."
Nunes barely out of penalty box and already at it, again. Basically throwing fit because DOJ / FBI wont share with him details what, how, when and why they are investigating in relation to Russia. Also goes to that DOJ / FBI purge that some right side nutters have been begging for on FOX.
