After waiting eight months for the DOJ to turn over the "electronic communication" (EC) - the document which the FBI used to launch the original counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) told Fox News that upon review - the EC reveals that no intelligence was used to launch the probe.

Nunes also touched on the fact that Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal pushed anti-Trump memos to the Obama State Department, written by Clinton "hatchet man" Cody Shearer and passed to Jonathan Winer, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.

“We now know that there was no official intelligence that was used to start this investigation. We know that Sidney Blumenthal and others were pushing information into the State Department. So we’re trying to piece all that together and that’s why we continue to look at the State Department,” Nunes told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

,@DevinNunes: "We do know that longtime associates of @HillaryClinton, including Sidney Blumenthal and another person named, I think, Cody Shearer, were actively giving information to the @StateDept that was somehow making its way to the @FBI." #SundayFutures @MariaBartiromo pic.twitter.com/nUw5gIHCB7 — Fox News (@FoxNews) April 22, 2018

Nunes noted that no intelligence was shared with the U.S. from any of the members of the "Five Eyes" agreement - that being Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

“We are not supposed to spy on each other’s citizens, and it’s worked well,” he said. “And it continues to work well. And we know it’s working well because there was no intelligence that passed through the Five Eyes channels to our government. And that’s why we had to see that original communication.”

This is relevant because the FBI says that the Trump investigation was kicked off after Australian diplomat Alexander Downer told the FBI that Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted in a London pub that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The New York Times reported last December that "Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role."

This was clearly not true according to the EC, which states that no intelligence passed through Five Eyes official channels.

Many have also raised questions over the fact that Alexander Downer, the source of the intelligence which launched the Trump investigation (and not through official channels) is absolutely a friend of the Clintons .

According to information provided by Australian policeman-turned investigative journalist, Michael Smith - the Clinton Foundation received some $88 million from Australian taxpayers between 2006 and 2014, reaching its peak in 2012-2013 - which was coincidentally (we're sure) Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's last year in office. Smith names several key figures in his complaints of malfeasance, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Alexander Downer.

The materials Smith gave to the FBI concern the MOU between the Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDs Initiative (CHAI) and the Australian government.

Smith claims the foundation received a “$25M financial advantage dishonestly obtained by deception” as a result of actions by Bill Clinton and Downer, who was then Australia’s minister of foreign affairs. Also included in the Smith materials are evidence he believes shows “corrupt October 2006 backdating of false tender advertisements purporting to advertise the availability of a $15 million contract to provide HIV/AIDS services in Papua New Guinea on behalf of the Australian government after an agreement was already in place to pay the Clinton Foundation and/or associates.”-Lifezette

And during the various Russia probes, Congressional investigators weren't told about Downer's connection to the Clinton Foundation.

"Republicans say they are concerned the new information means nearly all of the early evidence the FBI used to justify its election-year probe of Trump came from sources supportive of the Clintons, including the controversial Steele dossier," reports The Hill.

“The Clintons’ tentacles go everywhere. So, that’s why it’s important,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairman of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee. “We continue to get new information every week it seems that sort of underscores the fact that the FBI hasn’t been square with us.”

State Department in the Crosshairs

Nunes then told Fox's Maria Bartiromo that the House Intel Committee is now honing in on the State Department due to signs of "major irregularities" in how the alleged Papadopoulos comments reached U.S. intelligence agencies.

“We know a little bit about that because of what some of the State Department officials themselves have said about that,” Nunes said, adding that “We have to make sure that our agencies talk and they work out problems. We have to make sure that they don’t spy on either Americans citizens or that we’re not spying on British citizens.”

Still, Nunes doesn’t know whether former secretary of state, and then-Democratic challenger to Trump in the election, was pulling the strings of the investigation launched against her political opponent. However, he said it is known that two long-time Clinton associates – including Sidney Blumenthal – were “actively” giving information to the State Department, which “was somehow making its way to the FBI.” -Fox Business

Meanwhile, as we reported in February, a former official in President Obama's State Department has confirmed a claim by the Senate Judiciary Committee, that former British spy Christopher Steele and Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal gave him intelligence reports claiming that President Trump had been compromised by the Russians.

Jonathan Winer, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, confirmed the Judiciary Committee's claims in an op-ed for the Washington Post titled "Devin Nunes is investigating me: Here's the Truth."

"While talking about that hacking, Blumenthal and I discussed Steele’s reports. He showed me notes gathered by a journalist I did not know, Cody Shearer, that alleged the Russians had compromising information on Trump of a sexual and financial nature," writes Winer.

In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the “dossier.”Steele’s sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign.

Winer's op-ed corroborates the series of events outlined in a criminal referral for Steele issued by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), which asks the DOJ to investigate Steele for allegedly lying to the FBI about his contacts with the media.

Winer then gave Steele various anti-Trump memos from Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal, which originated with Clinton "hatchet man" Cody Shearer. Winer claims he didn't think Steele would share the Clinton-sourced information with anyone else in the government.

“But I learned later that Steele did share them — with the FBI, after the FBI asked him to provide everything he had on allegations relating to Trump, his campaign and Russian interference in U.S. elections,” Winer writes.

Comey Memos

Nunes then said that the release of the Comey memos was significant in that they would seem to exonerate President Trump of collusion.

The mainstream media and the dems have been running around talking about collusion, collusion, collusion. when they realized there was no collusion, they moved on to obstruction of justice, obstruction of justice, obstruction of justice. "Once you read all of the Comey memos, it becomes Exhibit A in the defense that there was no obstruction of justice."

The Chairman also noted that the Comey memos reveal Trump actually wanted his campaign investigated, telling Bartiromo "when you have the President of the US saying "Look, investigate all of my people. If anyone in my campaign was colluding with the Russians, I wanna know and they need to be brought to justice," Adding "Something of that nature is in the Comey memos."

Nunes also pointed out that Comey and Andrew McCabe are probably both in quite a bit of trouble:

Nunes: When you match up Mr. Comey's memos with what's in his book, with the interviews that he's giving I think he's got a lot of problems coming in the future as it relates to what the IG is looking at into his behavior during the Clinton email investigation. Bartiromo: What kind of problems? We know that the IG has recommended criminal charges against his former deputy Andrew McCabe. Nunes: "His lawyer has said no, Mr. Comey is lying - is essentially what Mr. McCabe is saying, that Comey did give him the right to go to the press... Clearly the IG believed Mr. Comey that he did not give Mr. McCabe the ability to go to the press.

Nunes then went into Comey's conduct - positing that the former FBI Director "laundered" classified memos to a friend, who leaked them to the New York Times - and that others may have received them as well.

The memos that he wrote - the seven memos that he wrote on President Trump, noting that Comey hadn't written memos on anyone else - four of them were classified. He decided to then launder them to a friend, who leaked them to the New York Times. If those memos contained classified information, he purposely did that, he purposely leaked them to get a Special Counsel started after he was fired. He leaked pieces of these, so we need to figure out exactly what is it he leaked. Who did he give these memos to? Was it just the friend that leaked them to the New York Times, or were there others? I believe there were others, I believe these Comey memos were actually given to several people - that contained classified information. The irony is - the very thing that Mr. Comey cleared Mrs. Clinton of.

All of that said - whether or not the noose is actually tightening around anyone's neck is up to the DOJ, as they can simply ignore the various criminal referrals made against McCabe and others. What can't be denied, at this point, is that both the Mueller investigation and the original counterintelligence investigation launched against Donald Trump and his campaign - and the complicit narrative-shaping performed by the MSM - appear to have been a highly coordinated effort to prevent Hillary Clinton from losing the White House.

Trump advisors Joe diGenova and Alan Dershowitz discussed just Hannity Saturday - with Dershowitz somehow coming to the conclusion that the entirety of the ongoing against Trump are nothing more than coincidence.