WHAT HAPPENED?
by Sharon Rondeau
(May 15, 2018) — In his opening statement on Tuesday evening, FNC host Sean Hannity declared during a string of “breaking news” that a meeting which House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Devin Nunes said would take place on Wednesday with members of the DOJ and FBI has been “rescheduled for next week.”
On FNC’s morning program, Fox & Friends, Nunes had appeared on-set stating that the meeting among House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, Nunes, and DOJ/FBI officials last Wednesday was “productive” insofar as the congressmen’s seeking of documentation showing the rationale for the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016.
On Tuesday morning, Nunes told F&F co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade that a second meeting scheduled for Wednesday this week was expected to yield similar results.
Nunes also said that he believed a “counterintelligence investigation” having been launched against a “political campaign” by the U.S. intelligence community was “probably not a good idea.”
That statement came after Nunes had been allowed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein several weeks ago to view the electronic communication (EC) on which the FBI allegedly relied to open the probe and Nunes’s finding of no underlying “intelligence” there.
The counterintelligence investigation was assumed by former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, who has been accused on several fronts of corruption, cronyism, and having overreached the authority extended to him by Rosenstein when he hired Mueller last May.
Mueller’s purpose was purportedly to determine the extent to which Russian operatives attempted to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election and whether or not anyone from the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Kremlin.
On Monday, veteran journalist John Solomon of The Hill reported that Mueller may have a “collusion” issue of his own involving a “Russian oligarch.”
At 9:13 p.m., Hannity said, “It’s unclear why this meeting is no longer happening,” referring to the Nunes/Gowdy/DOJ/FBI scheduled meeting on Wednesday. However, Hannity speculated that the DOJ is continuing its “slow-walking” of the production of documents against the possibility that Democrats might win the majority of U.S. House seats in the November midterm elections.