Devin Nunes: US Attorney John Durham Could Bring Criminal Conspiracy Charges Against James Comey
by Cristina LailaSeptember 2, 2019
Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-CA) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that Comey is not necessarily out of the woods in wake of the DOJ IG report.
Nunes said that US Attorney from Connecticut John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins of Spygate, could bring criminal conspiracy charges against former FBI Director James Comey.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report on James Comey last week on the mishandling of his classified memos.
The report revealed that Comey emailed classified memos to his attorneys with his private email and sent pictures of a memo to his ‘friend’ Daniel Richman via text message.
Comey also stored classified memos in his personal safe at home (his Trump-hating wife had access to the safe) rather than inside of the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] the FBI installed for him in his basement.
Although it was determined that Comey violated FBI policies pertaining to retention, handling and dissemination of FBI records and information, Barr declined prosecution.
Comey gloated after the DOJ declined to prosecute him for mishandling his classified memos, but Nunes said in his Breitbart interview that Comey is not home free.
“So this is a guy who is definitely not telling the truth, and the good thing about the IG report is he’s now made himself, the IG has now made him eligible for a larger conspiracy charge—a criminal conspiracy charge—which is what we really hope the attorney general [U.S. attorney] out of Connecticut is able to do,” Nunes said. “That’s the big thing that we need. We need real charges brought. And I think a lot of people are frustrated because they feel like Comey leaked classified information. But the question is would a panel of jurors in Washington, D.C., [convict]? There would be so much ambiguity because he claims—I forget the exact numbers, but like 1, 4, and 7 contained classified information but those weren’t the memos that he gave to his professor friend that went to the media. It would be almost impossible to prove and he would probably skate. And probably the worst thing to happen would be for him to skate. So I think that in the end, the Attorney General made the right decision as long as they continue to press on the larger issue which is: How did this whole investigation begin in the first place with zero evidence, zero evidence that Trump had any involvement with Russia?”
“I’ve been very careful,” Nunes said. “I shouldn’t be this way, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and I like to not name names until there’s been a fair process and we’ve given the U.S. Attorney time to do his work. However, with that said, the one thing that is clear is if the U.S. Attorney decides to take our complaint—I’m not saying he’s going to do exactly what we’ve asked him to do but he’s clearly looking at all this. If he looks at conspiracy, on the FISA courts and the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes, it is now impossible—there is so much evidence that puts Comey right in the middle of this—so that’s my point. If they’re going to go down that road, Comey has got to be involved in it. The evidence is there.”
Transcription via Breitbart. Click here to listen to the Breitbart interview with Congressman Nunes.