Back in July, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) admitted to CNN in an article titled: "Susan Rice, Senate intelligence panel privately meet" that "the unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes". Nunes is a Republican representative who chairs the House Intelligence Committee who has been chasing down a theory that former members of the Obama administration, illegally "unmasked" Trump campaign members who were private citizens. The unmasking means that the names were released to other government officials which Nunes claims was violated by Susan Rice and some intelligence officials.

Sen. Burr made his statement to CNN after Susan Rice had privately met with Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Dossier, hearings, threats to DOJ and humoring Nunes

The CNN article was published prior to an upcoming hearing with President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner to satisfy inquiries over the chance that the Trump administration colluded with Russian officials to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. On September 1, Nunes sent a threatening letter to President Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding that they turn over documents related to the controversial Russian dossier. In the letter, Nunes gave the Justice Department until September 14 to turn over the documents or he would have Sessions and the new director to the FBI Christopher Wray dragged before his Committee.

He said that he would publicly grill them and then hold them in contempt of Congress which would mean jail time of up to a year. Much like the inquiry into the unmasking and targeting Susan Rice, Rep. Nunes was making the demands by himself, without the other Republicans signing onto the letter, much less Democrats. When Richard Burr said months ago that Nunes created the "unmasking" investigation against Susan Rice, he accepted at least that they would look into any of the queries for their investigations, even those brought forward by Nunes.

Despite the fact that he's pursuing to investigate the conspiracy for himself, Republicans seem to be supportive in leaving him to it.

Nunes does what he wants

Last week, Rep. Michael Conway -- who is the leader of the House Russia investigation -- said that he supported Nunes' efforts, saying that they had to "run this thing to the ground".

Nunes' interest in the dossier follows reports that two staffers from the House Intelligence Committee traveled to London in July to get to the author of that dossier, former British Intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Since the dossier was mentioned last year, reports about Republican views on the dossier have downplayed the importance of the document as useless. The Justice Department did not respond to Nunes' request for his set deadline, suggesting that Nunes' threat made little impact.

Last month, Nunes subpoenaed the Justice and intelligence community despite objections from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Cali.), to find out if those departments used the information from the dossier to conduct their investigations, currently, being handled by special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Back when Nunes had stepped aside in June, he responded to the reporting that he had stepped aside as opposed to recusing himself. Nunes fired back at the media, saying that as chairman of the committee, he can step away from the investigation and come back to it when he wanted to. Plainly speaking, as chairman, he could do what he wanted.
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