Graham: Nunes is running ‘an Inspector Clouseau investigation’

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has taken his committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election “off track,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday morning, likening the chairman’s performance to that of the hapless Inspector Clouseau from the “Pink Panther” movies.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, Graham (R-S.C.) said Nunes (R-Calif.) owes his fellow committee members an opportunity to review the evidence that led him to announce last week that President Donald Trump’s transition team had been inadvertently surveilled following the election. Nunes has thus far been unwilling to disclose his source but did admit Monday that he met with that source inside the White House complex the day before he made his public disclosure.


“If he’s not willing to tell the Democrats and Republicans on the committee who he met with and what he was told, then I think he’s lost his ability to lead,” Graham said. “My belief is the House is off track and probably can’t get back on track.”

The South Carolina senator said the series of events revolving around Nunes is “bizarre,” but he stopped short of calling for the House Intelligence Committee chairman to step down, a move that Democrats in both the House and Senate have urged. Nunes has “put his objectivity in question at the very least,” Graham said, and must work to repair his credibility by being transparent about what information he possesses and where it came from.

“The problem that he’s created is he’s gone off on a lark by himself, sort of an Inspector Clouseau investigation here,” Graham said. “The only way this thing can be repaired is he tells his colleagues on the House intel committee who he met with and what he saw and let them look at the same information.”