House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that he will seek to “impeach” FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if they decline to hand over the document used to launch the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“I can tell you that we’re not going to just hold in contempt, we will have a plan to hold in contempt and impeach,” Nunes said on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”
Asked host Laura Ingraham if he was serious about impeaching Wray, Nunes replied: “Absolutely.”
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Nunes appeared exasperated on Tuesday with the FBI’s refusal to turn over to the intelligence committee an unredacted version of the two-page document used to justify the law enforcement investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Moscow.
The New York Times reported in December that the investigation was launched after U.S. officials received a tip that George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, had been told that Moscow had damaging information on 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
That report contradicted claims by several Republican lawmakers that the FBI probe was based on a controversial opposition research dossier authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
Steele’s work was commissioned by the private research firm Fusion GPS, which was paid for in part by the Clinton campaign.
Nunes vowed on Tuesday to get the document from the FBI and set a Wednesday night deadline for it to be handed over.
“We are going to get the document. We are going to get the two pages,” he said. “So they can either cough them up now, or it will get really complicated starting tomorrow night, and we’ll have to take all the steps necessary in order to get the document.”
–Updated at 11:30 a.m.