Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee believe Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's testimony and statements that the FBI had a source inside President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, and are now trying to get documents to find exactly how the investigation into Russian collusion during the election began, committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Tuesday.
"You have Fusion GPS, that was hired by the Democratic Party and the [Hillary] Clinton campaign to draw up a dossier on the president, as [he] was running," the California Republican told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"Glenn Simpson said that in closed testimony that became public, he confirmed he was telling Congress the truth which is probably a good idea. We believe he was telling the truth."
Nunes said that normally, the committees' members haven't believed Simpson was truthful, based on "what he said and how he tried to walk it back and plant a story in The Washington Post," but this time, they do believe him.
And, if it turns out there was a spy, it will "look badly on the Department of Justice and the FBI on how they conducted this investigation," said Nunes.
"We are trying to put clarity and sunlight for the American people so they know everything that happened on how this investigation began," said Nunes. " I think if the campaign was somehow set up, I think that would be a problem, right? If there were somehow meetings that occurred and all of this was a setup. We have yet to see any credible evidence or intelligence that led to the opening of this investigation."
Late last year, The New York Times reported that the investigation into Russian involvement got its start in May 2016, when former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had compromising information about Clinton.
He also said he had been told that Russia had thousands of emails that could embarrass the Democratic candidate.
"First of all, I believe they never should have opened a counterintelligence investigation into a political party," said Nunes. "Counterintelligence investigations are very rarely done, but they happen, and when they do happen, you have to be very careful because you're using the tools of our intelligence services and relationships with other countries in order to spy on a political campaign. That's probably not a good idea."
The solution is to get the DOJ to "just come clean" and provide all the documents demanded in a timely manner," said Nunes. "Tomorrow, we're going to go back, hopefully to the Department of Justice. They have questions that we left for them to answer for us this week, and I think we'll have another productive session."
Nunes said he does think that Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has a "real chance to clean this mess up for the American people.
"Nobody is asking for sources, right?" he said. "Nobody is asking for sources. Nobody is asking for methods. Let's lay all the cards out on the table. Here is what happened and how this counterintelligence investigation was opened."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.