Andrea Mitchell: Nunes has turned House Intel Committee ‘into a joke’

MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Monday said that House Intel chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) “has destroyed the credibility” of the committee, adding that he has turned the panel “into a joke.”

“I’m not hearing a lot of Republican senators in the United States Senate being as reckless as their counterparts in the House,” “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough said to Mitchell during a discussion about a New York Times report that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein approved a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application in 2017 to conduct surveillance on former Trump campaign associate Carter Page, according to a claim in a secret Republican memo.

“They’re not [being as reckless in the Senate],” responded Mitchell, who also serves as the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News. “But you also do not hear them suggesting that if Mueller were fired, or Rosenstein, which could be more significant because he is overseeing Mueller’s investigation, that they would take action. It’s a real softening of the backbone, the spine, in the Senate as well.”

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“But they’re not commenting on Nunes and this memo at all. They’re considering it a House problem. And Nunes was cleared by the Ethics Committee on that unmasking probe so that gave him the leeway, he believes and his supporters believe, to jump right back in,” she continued.

“He never stopped issuing subpoenas and interfering with the probe, according to critics on the House Intelligence Committee, and this has destroyed the credibility of the House Intelligence Committee.”

“The fact that Sens. [Mark] Warner (D-Va.) and [Richard] Burr (R-N.C.) are working so closely together on the Senate side, for the most part, has at least preserved that committee,” Mitchell concluded. “But the House Intelligence Committee, frankly, is a joke, despite the efforts of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and others, Rep. [Eric] Swalwell (D-Calif.) and others, to preserve their investigative work.”

According to three unnamed sources who spoke to The New York Times, the FBI and Justice Department’s application was based partially on research conducted by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele, whose investigation for a dossier paid for by the Democratic National Committee — and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in its latter stages — included unverified and scandalous claims about then-candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

The Times report added there’s no indication at this time that the FBI or DOJ acted improperly when attempting to secure the surveillance warrant on Page. 

“Democrats who have read the document say Republicans have cherry-picked facts to create a misleading and dangerous narrative,” reads the Times’s Sunday report. “But in their efforts to discredit the inquiry, Republicans could potentially use Mr. Rosenstein’s decision to approve the renewal to suggest that he failed to properly vet a highly sensitive application for a warrant to spy on Mr. Page, who served as a Trump foreign policy adviser until September 2016.”