Scalise: Schiff 'spying' on Nunes with call records

by Susan Ferrechio
| December 04, 2019 12:31 PM



House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff spied on the top Republican on his panel by obtaining his phone records and publishing them in an impeachment report, Minority Whip Steve Scalise said Wednesday.

“It raises a lot of serious questions,” the Louisiana Republican said.

“I want to know all the people Adam Schiff is spying on,” Scalise told the Washington Examiner. “Are there other members of Congress that he is spying on, and what justification does he have? He needs to be held accountable and explain what he’s doing, going after journalists, going after members of Congress, instead of doing his job.”

Schiff released a 300-page report Tuesday on the Democrats’ impeachment investigation that included call records obtained from AT&T.
The records showed calls between Nunes and President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and calls between Nunes and Lev Parnas, a Giuliani associate now under indictment for funneling foreign money to U.S. political candidates.

Schiff said the calls raise questions about whether Nunes was involved in what Democrats believe was a scheme to undermine Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I find it deeply concerning at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence of members of Congress complicit in that activity,” Schiff said Tuesday.

Nunes said he did not recall the phone call with Parnas and that a call with Giuliani was likely about the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, which turned up no evidence of collusion with the Trump campaign.

“I remember talking to Rudy Giuliani, and we were actually laughing about how Mueller bombed out,” Nunes said in a Fox News interview Tuesday.

But Democrats said the call records affirm their suspicions that Nunes was coordinating with the Trump administration and Giuliani to get Ukraine to investigate corruption allegations against Biden.

Democrats have been critical of Nunes since his tenure as the House Intelligence Committee chairman from 2017 to 2019. During that time, Nunes made a trip to the White House to inform Trump his transition meeting messages were intercepted by U.S. intelligence.

"I always felt that Mr. Nunes was a dividing character,” Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey told the Washington Examiner. “We know of his meetings with the president, which he had every right to do by the way. But in the peculiar position he was in, it was obvious where he was getting his orders and how he proceeded. And I think he’s going to get what’s coming to him.”

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said “there are serious questions” about the calls between Nunes and Giuliani and Parnas. He said Democrats “need to look at them and see what action ought to be taken, if any.”

Hoyer declined to say whether it would be in the form of a House ethics investigation or a punitive House floor measure.

“I want to have input from other people before I opine on what we ought to be doing. I will be doing that,” he said.

The call records produced in the report show late April calls between Giuliani and the White House, as well as between Giuliani and the Office of Management and Budget. The records also show calls between Parnas and reporter John Solomon, as well as between Parnas and Giuliani and between Parnas and Nunes.

Solomon wrote stories for the Hill about Ukraine and Hunter Biden, who was awarded a lucrative job on the board of Ukraine energy company Burisma Holdings. Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s role in the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor who was targeting Burisma.

"I'm interested in why he was doing this," Scalise said of Schiff. "And under what authority."

A top Democratic aid said nobody was spying on Nunes.

"The Republican minority of the three committees has had access to these subpoenaed records, and knows full well that neither Mr. Nunes nor Mr. Solomon were subpoenaed, nor were their call record," the aide said.


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...h-call-records