GOP congressman blasts Trump’s spy conspiracy
Rep. Tom Rooney, a top Republican lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee, is ripping President Donald Trump’s unsupported claim that the FBI inserted a spy inside his campaign.
“What is the point of saying that there was a spy in the campaign when there was none?” Rooney said in an interview on Wednesday. “You know what I’m saying? It’s like, ‘Lets create this thing to tweet about knowing that it’s not true.’ … Maybe it’s just to create more chaos but it doesn’t really help the case.”
Though Rooney isn’t the first GOP lawmaker to question Trump’s assertion, his comments were the most forceful repudiation to date from a Republican lawmaker. Rooney, a five-term Florida Republican who is retiring at the end of the year, was one of three GOP House members to lead the Intelligence Committee’s year-long Russia probe after Chairman Devin Nunes stepped aside.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), one of the other Russia probe leaders, was the first to undercut Trump’s “spygate” claims, telling TV interviewers last week that far from inappropriately surveilling Trump, the FBI was responsibly pursuing leads about Russian attempts to infiltrate the campaign.
Gowdy was one of nine lawmakers briefed by the Justice Department and FBI last month on the use of an informant to glean information from Trump campaign associates believed to have suspect ties to Russia. His comments endorsing the FBI tactic stirred Trump allies, who panned Gowdy and said he was taking the word of a Justice Department covering up misdeeds.
Until Wednesday, no other Republican lawmakers had backed Gowdy’s view.
That changed early in the day when Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he agreed with Gowdy’s “initial assessment” of the matter. He emphasized that the House is still seeking answers, but Ryan said he’d seen “no evidence” that the FBI acted inappropriately.
Rooney, who did not attend the DOJ briefing last month but said he’s been read in on the details, went further than Ryan and Gowdy.
“Look, if you want to disagree with what we were briefed on and say that it was a spy? That’s fine, I guess. We would just disagree with that,” he said. “And if that makes us RINOs because we have a different opinion about what the FBI was doing, then I guess we’re RINOs.”
Nunes, one of the other lawmakers in the Justice Department briefing, declined to comment Wednesday morning about his takeaway on the matter. It was his subpoena of the Justice Department for details about the informant that prompted Trump to intervene last month and demand that DOJ produce details to Congress.
Another committee member, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) told POLITICO that he’s still awaiting more information from the Justice Department — and suggested that his colleagues hadn’t seen all the relevant information, either.
“We’re going to insist on getting this information. They drag it, they delay it,” he said. “We’re not going to walk away from this. Trey hasn’t seen it either. He’s been briefed on it. He hasn’t seen it.”