Rep. Devin Nunes called the Justice Department inspector general's report on former FBI Director James Comey a "building block" for a criminal referral he delivered to the agency.

"For a long time I have been very hesitant to get too far out in front on the IG's capabilities. I believe what today is, is another example — it's a building block. It's important information," the California Republican said Thursday evening on Fox News.

Specifically, he said, Horowitz's findings contain "very important pieces of evidence that would build into the conspiracy complaint that we have sent to the Department of Justice."

Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, appeared on Sean Hannity's show, along with fellow Reps. Mark Meadows and John Ratcliffe, to react to Inspector General Michael Horowitz's 83-page scathing report on Comey released earlier in the day.

The watchdog found that Comey "violated" bureau policy in his handling of memos about his conversations with President Trump, but determined the former FBI director did not leak classified information to the media. Horowitz criminally referred Comey to the Justice Department for his conduct, but the agency declined to prosecute.

Comey celebrated the inspector general's report in a pair of snarky tweets.

DOJ IG "found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media." I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice. — James Comey (@Comey) August 29, 2019

And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a “liar and a leaker”—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president. — James Comey (@Comey) August 29, 2019

But Nunes and his GOP colleagues stressed that Comey has not yet escaped trouble, citing Horowitz's incoming report on alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses and Attorney General William Barr's and U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation.

Meadows said the reports will be "more damning than this and this was not a good day for the FBI's former director."

Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor who dropped out of contention to be director of national intelligence amid controversy last month, said anyone who worked on and signed off on the FISA warrant applications seeking to wiretap onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page will be placed under "tremendous scrutiny."

Comey was one of those signatories. Nunes mentioned that a one-on-one meeting Comey had with then-president-elect Trump at Trump Tower in January 2017 about the unverifed dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, which was the basis of Comey's first memo, was of particular interest. Horowitz's report shows that members of the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" team, which was conducting a counter-investigation into members of Trump's campaign, planned the briefing ahead of time and considered whether he would "make statements about or provide information of value to the pending Russia interference investigation." During this meeting, Comey told Trump he was not a subject of the investigation.

Details of this briefing were later reported by CNN, and soon after, BuzzFeed published the dossier, which contained salacious claims about Trump's ties to Russia.

Republicans have argued the dossier's Democratic benefactors, which included Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and its author's anti-Trump bias were were not made clear in the FISA applications, and they have demanded accountability. Democrats countered that the FBI acted appropriately, saying the Justice Department and the FBI met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis for probable cause.

Earlier this year, Nunes sent eight criminal referrals to the DOJ targeting individuals tied to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. One of them he said had to do with "charges of conspiracy to lie to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

Nunes also said, "When you look at the conspiracy that could get up to a dozen, two dozen people."