Jim Jordan says AG Barr ‘serious’ about uncovering origins of Russia probe

House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 7, 2017. (Associated Press)

Attorney General William Barr fully intends to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation and find out why federal authorities conducted surveillance on the Trump campaign, House Judiciary Committee member Jim Jordan told Fox News on Tuesday evening.

"I think this is Bill Barr doing what he said (he would do)," Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said during a panel discussion on "The Ingraham Angle." "Remember when he was in front of the Senate Finance Committee four weeks ago? (Barr) said he was serious about putting a team to get to the bottom of this."

Jordan's comments came in response to remarks on MSNBC earlier in the evening by former CIA Director John Brennan, who insisted that surveillance of the Trump campaign went through a "rigorous due process" and was approved by the FISA court. Any efforts by Republicans to portray the surveillance as a "deep state" operation are a misrepresentation, Brennan said.  

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But the only misrepresentation, Jordan said, is that investigators failed to tell the FISA court who paid for the anti-Trump Steele dossier.

That controversial dossier, which the FBI used to obtain a warrant from the court under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, and funded by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. It was used by Democrats and multiple media outlets as fodder to allege that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. 

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Meanwhile, Barr has appointed John Durham, a U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to examine the origins of the Russian investigation and determine if intelligence-collection efforts targeting the Trump campaign were "lawful and appropriate," a person familiar with the matter told Fox News.

When asked to give his take on other networks dismissing the effort as a conservative "fantasyland," Jordan said the effort should be taken seriously.

During the recent Senate Finance Committee hearing, Barr used two terms that should "scare" every single American, Jordan said. The terms were "unauthorized surveillance" and "political surveillance."