House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes provided an eye-opening update on the so-called “Russian collusion” narrative pushed during the 2016 presidential campaign and thereafter, which involved unfounded allegations that President Donald Trump and Moscow conspired to ensure his victory.
In an interview with Newsmax TV, the California Republican pointed fingers directly at Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
”This was their narrative,” Nunes told host Eric Bolling on Wednesday. ”They paid for it.”
Newsmax noted further a recent indictment by John Durham, the special counsel empowered during the Trump administration to look into the origins of ‘Russiagate’:
The indictment of Igor Danchenko shows the Clinton campaign was paying for someone to spread a narrative of Trump as an asset of Russia, but having done so with information that originated with the Clinton campaign itself, according to Nunes.
”I guess the best way to put it there could be they were just avatars,” Nunes told Bolling of Danchenko and dossier author Christopher Steele, a former MI6 British intelligence agent.
”They needed somebody so that they could say, ‘oh, we have a former MI6 James Bond guy’ on one hand, ooh, he’s talking to a Russian national with Russian contacts.’ That’s where it all stopped, though, because Steele wasn’t James Bond,” he continued.
“This guy was just getting paid to do a job, to put his signature on something.”
”It was the Clinton people feeding this in, and then the FBI knew about this. They knew none of these guys were reliable and they presented it to the FISA court, and therein lies the problem,” Nunes, who has been on this investigation from the outset, continued.
”We knew it was completely made up,” he said. ”We knew the FBI was in on it. We knew the Clinton campaign was in on it. We have built a circumstantial case for that.
“What Durham has now done is he’s been able to bring in email, phone calls, communications, payments and put all this together,” he said, noting that the special prosecutor has to bring to justice all who were involved in order to protect the presidency in the future.
”I doubt that the Democrats in this country are ever going take responsibility for this hoax that they’ve hoisted on the American people for years,” Bolling said.
”Durham continues to have a huge responsibility on his shoulders, because if he doesn’t get to the bottom of this, every day that goes by, the American people are losing trust in our own Department of Justice and the FBI,” he added.
This kind of conspiracy in an election will have long-lasting ”repercussions” on our democracy, Nunes noted further.
”It’s unhealthy for a democratic republic, and quite frankly, it leads to instability,” he said.
”And I think that’s the overall concern here: that if Durham is not able to track all these guys down and put them in jail, it’s going to be seen as, I mean it already is, the biggest scandal in political history, and has long-lasting repercussions,” said the California Republican.