Public hearings should be held about the allegations in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes' memo that the FBI abused surveillance practices during the 2016 presidential election, Rep. Pete King, a fellow committee member, said Friday.
"I think now that these findings are out, there should be public hearings," the New York Republican told Fox News' Martha MacCallum on "The Story."
"I would think the Judiciary Committee should certainly hold hearings. I think that [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein should be required to explain why he extended the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application, why he signed off of on that."
He also thinks it's important to learn, now that the memo is out, about what the Justice Department and FBI knew about a salacious dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, which the memo claims was central to a FISA court allowing a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a campaign aide for then-candidate Donald Trump.
"That's a key issue here," said King. "How could they have gone into a secret court, a FISA court knowing how weak and how potentially false this information was?"
King also said he is "really disappointed" with the "that's it" reaction of former FBI Director James Comey to the memo.
"I was one of those people who over the years supporting James Comey," said King. "I am really disappointed. That just was a political response. He did not dispute one fact in this 4-page report. This is a devastating indictment of his tenure at the FBI."
King added that he would have thought Comey would have pointed to just one item with which he disagreed, but instead "he just came out with something that sounds like a talking point for the Democratic National Committee. That to me shows he is concerned about something."
The lawmaker said he also finds the reports that the court was not told that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, had, in part, paid for the dossier "shameful."
In addition, King said he also finds it "unusual" that the court did not want information about who financed the dossier, except that it possibly believed that with so many top officials from the FBI and DOJ signing off, the information must have been accurate.
"As far as I know, this is the first ever federal investigation of a presidential campaign being carried on while the campaign was on-going," said King. "To do that, based on this flimsy evidence, it's a dangerous precedent to set here. Very dangerous."