Schumer: Maybe Nunes should be replaced

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday floated the possibility of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) replacing Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

“I hope … he either comes to his senses or maybe Speaker Ryan replaces him,” Schumer said of the GOP chairman on CNN’s “Situation Room.”

“I don’t have much confidence in Chairman Nunes,” the Senate’s top Democrat continued. “Nunes seems to be much more of a partisan and that is a very, very bad thing.”

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Schumer said he was worried the GOP chairman could undo a “grand tradition of bipartisanship” within the Senate and House Intelligence committees.

Nunes has come under fire from both parties this week after he spoke with reporters and briefed the president on information he said the U.S. intelligence community incidentally collected on members of Trump’s transition team.

Democrats slammed Nunes for briefing Trump without first speaking to their panel, which is investigating the matter, with some Democratic calls for him to step down.

Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee said Friday that they still had not seen Nunes’s evidence.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Committee, blasted Nunes on Friday for cancelling the committee’s scheduled open hearing for next week, telling reporters that Nunes is “cutting off public access to information.”

Nunes said the hearing with several senior Obama administration officials had been nixed to make room for a closed-door briefing with FBI Director James Comey and NSA head Michael Rogers.

Nunes has defended his decision to not share his information with Democrats, saying he is protecting his source and separately saying that he had a “duty and an obligation” to brief Trump.

Both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees are probing Russia’s meddling in the U.S. election and any potential connection between Trump officials and Moscow.

Schumer said while there have been a “few bumps in the road” with the Senate’s investigation he believes things are going better than in the House.

“Even though on occasion Chairman Burr has lost our full faith and credit…I think things are working much better in the Senate, absolutely,” he told CNN.