That seems what is indicated by a Politico story titled House Republicans quietly investigate perceived corruption at DOJ, FBI, with the subtitle “The group was born out of frustration over the Justice Department's refusal to explain how it used a disputed dossier.”
The piece, by Kyle Cheney and John Bresnahan, went live shortly after 6:30.
Here are the first three paragraphs:
A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans.
A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee's high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven't informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House's general counsel.
The people familiar with Nunes' plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence.
A couple of quick notes.
Adam Schiff, Ranking on Intelligence, was not previously aware of this effort — but then, it is House REPUBLICANS, led by Devin Nunes, who is in theory supposed to be recused from anything dealing with Russia, which by definition should include the Dossier.
The story has an error — it says the dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and that the company that commissioned the dossier, Fusion, admitted this under pressure. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought the original payment for the work by Steele was by a Republican primary rival of Trump, most likely Jeb Bush. While it is true that Democrats aware of what Steele was doing picked up the funding, the omission of the original funding distorts the actual original purpose of the dossier, which was to gather information on Trump during the primary in hopes of knocking him out.
Having noted Schiff’s prior lack of awareness of this, it is also worth noting what appears in the last two paragraphs of the piece:
Schiff said committee rules require consultation between Republicans and Democrats, but House Speaker Paul Ryan must enforce bipartisan cooperation if he wants it to occur.
"And at this point, you have to conclude that he doesn’t," Schiff said. Ryan’s office declined to comment.