House Intel Committee Republicans Boycotted A Briefing By A Double Agent Who Helped The FBI Ensnare Russian Spies

Ever since House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes ambiguously claimed that Trump associates were swept up in “incidental” (legal) surveillance, the House’s investigation into Trump-Russian ties has stalled. Nunes upset his Democratic colleagues by briefing Trump and keeping them in the dark. He may be colluding with the White House and has bizarrely claimed that Dems aren’t serious about the Russia probe. However, a new report from the Daily Beast reveals that Republicans refuse to cooperate with bipartisan efforts to persist, and this led GOP members to boycott a briefing by an FBI double agent who worked against Russia.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) had invited Naveed Jamali (seen above) to give a Wednesday briefing that was intended to “reboot the committee’s stalled Russia investigation” after Nunes cancelled multiple hearings. All GOP members of the committee received invitations to Jamali’s discussion of Russian intel methods, but all of them skippled the briefing. Jamali, a current national security specialist, served the FBI in the 2000s and became a double agent after Russia attempted to recruit him. He did brief the attending Democrats and relayed happenings to the Beast:

Jamali briefed the lawmakers on his personal experience as an FBI double agent who interacted with the Russian government, noting that Russian intelligence often didn’t have a specific purpose for recruitment — they found assets and looked for a use for them later.

“When I look at what is out in the public domain … about Michael Flynn and others, my concern is that there are echoes of what the Russians did with me, in what happened in [the presidential elections of] 2016,” Jamali told The Daily Beast. “It takes years to recruit an asset … ‘they say someone is of interest, let’s recruit them’ and then it could be years after they’ve been recruited when they’re put into play.”

The briefing was organized solely around Jamali’s own experiences (he even helped pull Russians into an FBI sting) and aimed to omit discussion of the Trump administration, which ideally would have opened some minds to the subject matter at hand. In turn, this could have provided valuable context for the committee to reboot the Russia-Trump probe. Unfortunately, no common ground was met because Republicans declined to show up, and there’s no set date for when the committee will take up the Russia probe again.

After a long day of being boycotted and insulted, Jamali tweeted his gratitude to House Democrats, and he told their GOP counterparts that he’s willing to come back and deliver another briefing.

(Via Daily Beast & Military Times)

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