Oversight chair: ‘Ridiculous’ to call for investigation into Nunes

House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Tuesday dismissed a call for an investigation into House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

“That’s ridiculous,” Chaffetz said Tuesday on MSNBC.

His comments come after Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) last week called for an investigation into Nunes, who earlier this month bypassed his own committee to brief President Trump and the media on information related to incidental U.S. surveillance of Trump’s transition team.

Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said last week that Nunes “put a cloud over his own investigation.”

“And he has become the subject basically, he should be, of an investigation,” Cummings said. “It’s a real problem.”

Democrats have called for Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, which includes probing the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, after the revelation that he visited the White House grounds the day before announcing he’d been shown evidence of incidental surveillance of President Trump’s transition team.

On Tuesday, Chaffetz defended Nunes, calling him a man of “high integrity.”

“He may not like the way chairman Nunes is doing this or that. He may say that he made a mistake on this or that,” Chaffetz said, referring to Cummings.

“But Devin Nunes is a man of high integrity. He’s done a great job chairing a very difficult committee and has the full confidence of the Republican conference, the Republican leadership and myself…and a host of others.”