[FoxNews] House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told "Sunday Morning Futures" in an exclusive interview that "we've now expanded our investigation, full-blown investigation, into the Brookings Institute."
Nunes made the comment one day after the primary source for Christopher Steel's unverified dossier had been revealed as a United States resident who once co-wrote a research paper showing Russian President Vladimir Putin plagiarized his dissertation.
Host Maria Bartiromo pointed out on Sunday that "Nunes was among the first lawmakers to question the Russian collusion hoax as then chairman of the House Intel committee." She noted that three years ago he said "that the FBI engaged in a coup to take down a sitting president."
She pointed to a Fox Business interview last week where Nunes first said that he believes there were "direct links between the Brookings Institute leadership and the creation, possibly, of the Steele dossier and the dissemination of the Steele dossier."
The FBI knew who Danchenko was and interviewed him in 2017 about the information he provided for the Steele dossier that purported to show Trump campaign ties to the Russian government. Danchenko cooperated on the condition the FBI keep his identity secret so he could protect himself, the paper reported.
But that all changed when Attorney General William Barr directed the FBI to declassify the report about its three-day interview of Danchenko and turn it over to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose Judiciary Committee has been investigating the origins of the Russia probe. Graham wanted the interview out because it further undercuts the credibility of the Steele dossier, he said.
Danchenko's identity further raises questions about the FBI renewing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page. In the last two renewal applications to the FISA court, the FBI referred to the primary sub-source of the document as "truthful and cooperative" and "Russian-based," the Justice Department Inspector General report found.
But Danchenko lives in the United States, though he visited Moscow to gather information on Steele's behalf, the Times reported.
Nunes pointed to an interview he did with Bartiromo a couple of months ago where he "talked about that we were really looking at three Russians."
"It ends up... the third one was actually not a Russian at all. He actually sounds like he lives here in America and the FBI led Congress to believe, and the media led Congress to believe and they led the American public to believe, that somehow Steele had this really super-secret source that nobody could know about," he continued.
"Well it ends up he used to work for the Brookings Institute. It looks like there were a lot of connections to the Brookings Institute."
Nunes then explained what he believes "all of this" means.
"This was the Clinton campaign's dossiers. It was the dirt. It was a phony story that they sold not only to the American people, but they sold it and corrupted our FBI, where it appears these dirty cops were more than willing to take this information to present it to the FISA court," Nunes said.
He added, "We've now expanded our investigation, full-blown investigation, into the Brookings Institute and it really centers on two issues."
"One is the IRS. This is a tax-exempt organization. There supposed to stay out of politics. They clearly have not done that. They've obstructed our investigation with propaganda for the last four years," Nunes said. "It’s well-known that they've attacked our investigation for four years through this kind of phony legal group of fact-checkers that they set up. So we need to look in there to see if they are involved in politics."
Dean Patterson, an IRS spokesperson, told Fox News, "Federal law prohibits the IRS from discussing specific taxpayers."
Nunes said the second issue is that the Brookings Institute allegedly accepts "foreign money from foreign countries and foreign governments."
"We need to know what foreign governments were involved in this because, were they acting on behalf of a foreign power?" Nunes said.
"Everybody has questioned for all this time, if the Trump campaign, Republicans, were involved with Russians, well who was the Brookings Institute, who were their foreign donors? And are they doing all of this not just to help the Democratic Party, but also any foreign government?"
#5
“Since 2008, Brookings amassed nearly $20 million in contracts and grants from 50 agencies – including the Obama Administration’s Office of the President. Despite assets of $496 million (IRS990, FY2014), our OpenTheBooks.com audit shows it was not enough. Brookings instituted an aggressive strategy to pursue federal business over the past nine-years.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
