Conservative Watchdog Group Requests Investigation Into Top House Intel Democrats
by KRISTINA WONG
BreitBart.com
17 Apr 2017
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch on Friday called for a preliminary investigation into two top Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee for potentially disclosing classified information to the public in violation of House ethics rules.
Judicial Watch has requested the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into whether Vice Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) broke House ethics rules for disclosing classified information to the public, with which left-wing groups have targeted its Republican chairman.
Last month, progressive groups MoveOn.org and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) requested an investigation into Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) after they said he had done the same thing.
Nunes temporarily stepped aside from leading a high-profile probe into Russia’s involvement into the U.S. presidential elections while the Office of Congressional Ethics is looking into whether any rules were broken.
Judicial Watch noted this double-standard in its request:
If the standard for filing a complaint or opening an ethics investigation is that a member has commented publicly on matters that touch on classified information, but the member does not reveal the source of his or her information, then the complaints against Chairman Nunes are incomplete insofar as they target only Nunes.
At least two other members of the House Intelligence Committee have made comments about classified material that raise more directly the very same concerns raised against Chairman Nunes because they appear to confirm classified information contained in leaked intelligence community intercepts.
The left-wing groups filed their complaint against Nunes after he told reporters on March 22 that he had seen evidence that the intelligence community had incidentally collected information about Trump transition team members, and that the information was widely disseminated and their names unmasked.
Judicial Watch noted that Schiff had spoken to an audience at the Brookings Institution the day before, on March 21, appearing to confirm a leaked December 29 conversation between incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
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