'Pitiful representation of American democracy': Ex-CIA leader rages against Republicans' FBI-DOJ probe

After a ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Republicans have opened an investigation into the Justice Department, former CIA counterintelligence official Phil Mudd unequivocally condemned the GOP majority decision.

"What a pitiful representation of American democracy," Mudd told CNN's Wolf Blitzter and his panelists on "The Situation Room. He went on to say that Americans trusted Congress not to investigate another branch of our own government, but to probe how deeply Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

"There's history for how to do this," he continued, referencing the House's party-line decision to release a classified memo that reportedly details evidence of abuses at the DOJ. When deciding to release a document about how the CIA treated Al Qaeda members in "secret prisons," Mudd said there were reports published by the majority, minority and the CIA itself.

"All three differed, but they agreed that the American people should see the full story," Mudd said. "We can't even see the full story here, and that's American democracy?"

When voting to release the secretive memo, written by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), supposedly detailing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's role in surveilling former Trump campaign aide Carter Page as proof of "abuses" in the DOJ, the majority voted against the release of a Democrat-authored "counter-memo."

Watch Mudd's response to the memo and the probe into the FBI it spawned below, via CNN: