Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the New York Times’ bombshell report on a counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s ties to Russia only strengthens the argument that the FBI has no evidence of collusion against the Trump team.

“This is yet more evidence that FBI leaders actually had no real evidence against the Trump team,” Nunes said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. “Instead, they were simply trying to undermine a president they didn’t like and avenge Comey’s firing. By relying on the Steele dossier — a fraudulent document funded by Democrats and based on Russia sources — FBI leaders were either complicit or too oblivious to notice they were being used in a disinformation operation by the Democratic Party and Russian operatives.”

On Friday, the New York Times reported the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey in the spring of 2017. The counterintelligence inquiry was later wrapped into the FBI’s broader Russia collusion investigation, which special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to lead after Comey’s ouster. That inquiry is still ongoing.

In a follow-up, the Washington Post reported the president took steps to try to protect his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including pressuring a translator to withhold information on discussions between the two leaders from administration officials. – READ MORE