Fox News host Laura Ingraham confronted Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Friday for allegedly not reading documents containing classified information he specifically requested from the Justice Department.
Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, fought for months to be able to read the documents, which outline the Justice Department and FBI’s evidence for opening a counterintelligence probe into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but reportedly did not read a two-page document when allowed to by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a meeting.
“Now you’re getting slammed in response by CNN and now others that you asked for these documents and then you, Devin Nunes, have a staffer read them. You don’t read them. So how serious are you?” asked Ingraham on her show “The Ingraham Angle,” referring to a CNN report that said Nunes left the documents unopened in a folder at the meeting.
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Nunes brushed aside the CNN report and said the document was only a “page and a half” and didn’t have the information he was looking for.
“We’re not going to get into the specifics about how we conduct our investigation,” Nunes said, emphasizing that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) read it.
“Mr. Gowdy is the one that reviews all the initial documents with our investigators. I’m not going to get into the processes that we use, but as the chairman of the committee, when they need documents, they come to me,” he told Ingraham.
“When they come after you and say Nunes is getting these documents — I think a lot of people want you to have these documents — then you don’t read them, it opens you up to criticism,” the host returned, saying she didn’t understand his reluctance to say whether he read the most recent document released to him by the Justice Department.
The Intelligence chairman, who leads a group of committee Republicans alleging bias by the FBI and Justice Department in launching the investigation into Russia’s election meddling and possible Trump campaign collusion, previously admitted that he relied on Gowdy’s review of documents related to surveillance warrant applications used on a Trump campaign official.