ED HENRY (HOST): The GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Devin Nunes [R-CA], temporarily stepping away from the Russia investigation. This after the liberal MoveOn.org filed an ethics complaint and a petition calling for Nunes to be ousted. But our next guest calls the whole thing frivolous. Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake has been all over this story from the start. He joins us live now. What do you think, Eli, about MoveOn.org entering the fray after all of the back and forth we've already seen?

ELI LAKE: Well, what we're seeing now -- because you're now seeing other groups calling on [Democratic ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Congressman] Adam Schiff [D-CA] to recuse himself and to look at, to file these ethics charges on what I think are totally frivolous issues of revealing so-called classified information -- is the abuse of the Office of Congressional Ethics and how they can take complaints from any partisans on right or left. And it really kind of detracts from serious ethics violations and the serious work of the ethics committee when you now have an investigation into what I think is a total distraction, which is so-called revealing classified information when the key thing to remember here is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, did not reveal sources and methods on how this information was monitored or the targets of who was monitored. So what are we talking about? 

HENRY: I think you make a great point, which -- and our viewers are watching this, they've seen this ball going around and around in Washington, and they want to know -- rather than what's happening with Nunes or Schiff, the Republican or the Democrat, the top ones on that panel -- what is really happening with the Russia investigation, Eli? Are we any closer to figuring out just how much influence they had on the last election? Because I thought that was the point.



LAKE: I thought there was a very good hearing about two weeks ago in the Senate Intelligence Committee where they had kind of experts on this who talked about another angle of it, which is the Russian propagation of fake news and how it was very targeted to geographic areas. I hadn't heard that before, and it was really laid out pretty well. But here's the problem: the FBI is investigating this. There may be a criminal component of it, and it's so serious that it might involve people in [President Donald] Trump's orbit. At least that's what [FBI Director] James Comey said last month. If that's the case, then you really do run into problems if you have two congressional oversight committees calling witnesses that potentially the FBI would be calling. 

HENRY: Right. 



LAKE: And that's a potential for a lot of problems in terms of the justice process. So my view is that there is a lot to investigate in how the Russians did it, but the super red hot issue of Trump's connection to all of this, which is clearly what the Democrats want to make it, is something that should be left for now to the FBI and then have the committees do all the oversight and also look at the politicization of surveillance as well. 

HENRY: And basically stick to the facts as you say rather than these partisan side shows and actually get to the facts.

Previously:

On Fox, Bloomberg's Eli Lake Says Nunes’ Muddled, Nothingburger Statement On Surveillance Of Trump Transition Was “An Important Story”

The Susan Rice Unmasking Story Is A Perfect Case Study Of The New Pro-Trump Propaganda Ecosystem

Newt Gingrich Defends Rep. Nunes' Decision To Circumvent House Intelligence Committee On Wiretap Investigation