Nunes rips DOJ for failure to release Trump-Russia dossier documents

California Rep. Devin Nunes (R), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter Thursday to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein accusing the Justice Department of ignoring subpoenas sent to the agency by the Intelligence Committee back in August.

In the letter dated Dec. 28, the California Republican accuses the agency of ignoring his requests for information pertaining to the Steele dossier, a dossier of unverified information linking President Trump to Russia compiled by a former British intelligence agent.

Nunes called the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) response to subpoenas sent in August for the information “disingenuous at best.”

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“Shortly before my meeting with you in early December, DOJ subsequently located and produced numerous FD-302s pertaining to the Steele dossier, thereby rendering the initial response disingenuous at best,” Nunes wrote.

FD-302s are FBI forms used to report on interviews conducted.

“Given the content and impact of these supposedly newly-discovered FD-302s, the Committee is no longer able to accept your purported basis for DOJ’s blanket refusal to provide responsive FBI Form FD-1023s–documenting meetings between FBI officials and FBI confidential human sources-or anything less than full and complete compliance with its subpoenas,” Nunes added.

Republicans on the intelligence committee and elsewhere have honed in on the Steele dossier in recent weeks, seeking to know whether it was used as an excuse by the Obama administration to spy on the Trump campaign. On Thursday, Nunes subpoenaed an associate to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who first reported the document to the FBI.

Nunes continued to attack Rosenstein and the Justice Department later on in the letter, writing that DOJ’s decision to ignore his subpoenas represented a broader pattern of unacceptable behavior by top officials in the agency.

“Unfortunately, DOJ/FBI’s intransigence with respect to the August 24 subpoenas is part of a broader pattern of behavior that can no longer be tolerated,” Nunes wrote. “At this point it seems the DOJ and FBI need to be investigating themselves.”

Nunes was forced to recuse himself from the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe earlier this year after the House Ethics Committee began looking into his handling of classified information involved in the investigation, which was taken over by Texas Rep. Mike Conaway (R).