Ex-Justice official calls BS on GOP concerns over Devin Nunes: 'Paul Ryan could remove him'

A former Justice Department spokesman said House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republican lawmakers should not escape blame for slow-walking the Trump-Russia probe.

Matthew Miller, an MSNBC analyst and former Justice Department official, said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was just not most clumsily obvious example of how GOP lawmakers were hindering congressional investigations of Russian election interference.

Republicans expressed displeasure that Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was investigating alleged corruption within the FBI in an apparent effort to undermine the special counsel probe -- but Miller called out those concerns as phony.

"I don't buy that for one second," Miller told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson. "Republican leadership are good at telling reporters on background and off the record that they don't like the way Devin Nunes has handled things."

"If Paul Ryan really didn't like the way Devin Nunes was handling this investigation, he could remove him, he could push him off of it," Miller continued."Same for people like Trey Gowdy (and) Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They're doing many of the things that Devin Nunes is doing, in terms of going to war with the FBI and questioning the special prosecutor's mandate, but they're doing it in less obviously transparent ways. They're just less incompetent versions of Devin Nunes."