Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., told Newsmax on Thursday that special counsel John Durham is a "company guy," which explains why no one has been held accountable for the crimes he outlined in his report and in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
"Durham is an honorable guy, but he's a company guy, as you say, so he's looking out for the company, and that's why you didn't see any referrals for prosecution," Cline said during his appearance on "The Record with Greta Van Susteren." "You didn't see any arrests, and he didn't even interview all of the witnesses that he needed to interview. But he laid out the facts for the American people.
"The Steele dossier was based on faulty evidence, lies told, and those lies went all the way up to the top," the congressman added. "You had President [Barack] Obama, Vice President [Joe] Biden briefed that [Democrat] Hillary Clinton's [presidential] campaign was behind the Steele dossier. They did nothing about it. They allowed it to continue to fester. And this line was fed to the American people by people like [Rep.] Adam Schiff [D-Calif.] during the 2016 campaign and beyond."
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Durham described his report findings on the origins of the FBI's investigation into claims of Russian collusion by Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
"We found troubling violations of law and policy in the conduct of highly consequential investigations directed at members of the presidential campaign, and ultimately a presidential administration," Durham said during the hearing. "It matters, not whether it was a Republican campaign or Democrat campaign; it was the presidential campaign."
The facts "should be of concern to any American who cares about our civil liberties," Durham continued. "Our report details the FBI was too willing to accept and use politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research such as the Steele dossier. The FBI relied on the dossier in FISA applications, knowing there was likely material originating from a political campaign, a political opponent."
Host Greta Van Susteren asked Cline if Congress should focus more on getting things done for the American people and less on a seemingly endless stream of investigations. He answered, "We do need to get more done for the American people."
"Congress after Congress has abdicated its responsibility to an ever-growing executive branch, administrative, bureaucratic state, and this state continues to do wrong, overreach, break laws, act with impunity, and they need to be held accountable," Cline said. "We do that on appropriations through the power of the purse. We're doing it right now, and you will see conservative appropriations bills that rein them in. But we can also pass legislation like with FISA reauthorization, where we're going to take back that authority and make sure that the FBI is never allowed to misuse its authority to spy on Americans again."
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