Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) described last week’s grand jury indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence operatives — via allegations and information presented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team — as part of “a game to get the public to see something that isn’t there.” He offered his remarks on Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight in an interview with Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.

Issa said, “The premise of the Russian probe is all about a collusion for which there’s not one piece of evidence after a year and a half, and the original investigation was tainted by Peter Strzok and his activities. A lot of people missed it, but it’s not an accident that the downgrading of the offense by Hillary Clinton from a crime to a non-crime — that language change — occurred on Peter Strzok’s own computer, and he finally said, ‘Well, according to the metadata, it was my computer’ Well, of course it was your computer; you did it.”

Issa continued, “When you look at this, whether it’s the Department of Justice, the FBI, or even the same intelligence networks that Democrats constantly remind us said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that were, for the most part, not found, so when the president says the equivalent of ‘trust, but verify’ — to use a Reagan term — why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he always say, ‘I want to have second sources, and I want to verify things, and that you take no one at blind faith when there are lives in such great numbers at stake.’?”

Issa warned of reciprocal consequences from foreign states should President Donald Trump demand the extradition of Russian nationals indicted via Mueller’s allegations. He observed, “If [Donald Trump] had supported these indictments, and said, ‘Yes, absolutely, turn [the indicted Russian intelligence operatives] over,’ what would Putin have appropriately said? Or maybe even the Italian government, to use more of an ally? ‘Okay, fine, you turn over your spies who we have named and asked for from various things.'”

Issa added, “Italy has issued arrest warrants for multiple CIA agents who they have credible evidence performed a rendition in their country and took a foreign national out and took him out, and took him to Guantanamo, essentially. They want him back. Well, we’re not turning over our CIA operatives.”

Issa noted Comey’s record of making false statements while testifying under oath before congressional committees. He remarked, “Let’s just look at the indictment and who it came from. It came from the same Department of Justice based on the FBI work that former [FBI] Director Comey was running just a few years ago. Remember that Director Comey came before the Judiciary Committee and said he absolutely needed a court order to force Apple to write a piece of software to remotely go into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, unlock it, and tell him what was there. What was amazing he swore under oath that — and this is the director of the FBI, before he was fired — that they had used all their vast assets, and the FBI was the best. A few weeks later, they paid some service who unlocked it for them, and just about the same time a college professor published for $250 worth of hardware what it would take to actually duplicate that chip and decode it in a manner of minutes. So, we’ve been lied to directly by the FBI director, and that’s just an example where he was proven to lie by people that weren’t Republicans or Democrats.”

Issa described as ironic the issuance of indictments related to criminal hacking based on information likely obtained by criminal hacking. He said, “When you see these indictments of people who will never be brought to trial, the information about how they found out who they were will never be gotten. It’s frivolous on its face. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to catch these guys and put them where all spies go, but let’s understand — and I’m going to belabor a point for a moment, if I can — how did we find out who these spies were? We probably used our own hackers to go into their computers and find out who they were, and so the irony of claiming that these people we found out; we didn’t find out about these people because we made a phone call and asked, ‘Who are your spies on this?’ We found out through clandestine illegal sources, but we’re not going to allow an indictment in Russia to have those people go. “



Issa concluded, “Much of what you see and hear, right now, is a game to get the public to see something that isn’t there. President Trump has worked harder than any other president in my lifetime to liberate America, to make it free and secure to revitalize our military, and he has been an appropriate enemy of Russia activity while in fact reaching out and trying to do an extension of the START Nuclear Treaty and deal with Iran, North Korea, and Syria.”

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.