A top Republican congressional leader Friday called out “neo-McCarthyites” among the Democratic Party who see Russian conspiracies everywhere except in 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told “The Laura Ingraham Show” that his Democratic colleagues showed little interest in Russia until Clinton lost the 2016 election.

“Now, you’re right, they’re like neo-McCarthyites,” he said. “All they do is, they see Russians around every corner. But the fact is, they’re Russian ghosts. The only place we find real Russians is if we follow the money from the Hillary campaign to the Russians.”

Nunes was referring to money that flowed from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through a Washington, D.C., law office to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS — and then to former British spy Christopher Steele. That effort led to “phony dirt” on Present Donald Trump supplied by confidential sources in Russia, Nunes said.

Nunes spoke hours before special counsel Robert Mueller’s team unveiled an indictment charging 13 Russians with interfering in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Nunes also disputed comments by former CIA Director Michael Hayden criticizing a memo Nunes’ staffers on the committee wrote accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI of improperly using the unverified Steele document to obtain a warrant to eavesdrop on low-level Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

Hayden said the memo was destructive to U.S. national security.

“I actually really respect Director Hayden … He’s a good guy,” Nunes told Ingraham. “He’s actually a friend of mine. But he just happens to be entirely wrong on this. Maybe I need to call him and talk to him.”

Nunes disputed Hayden’s characterization of the current era of congressional oversight as “really pretty dark.”

Said Nunes, “I think it’s the opposite. We’re shining — we’re opening a light onto this. For a long time, these agencies got corrupted at the top, especially during the Obama administration. This is not something that I wanted to do.”

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Nunes pointed out that he went on CNN in April 2016 to complain that then-President Barack Obama’s administration was not doing enough to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interference in the campaign.

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“As the chairman of the intelligence committee, I blasted them, saying that the biggest intelligence failure since 9/11 was our failure to understand Putin’s plans and his intentions,” he said.

Nunes said Obama virtually ignored Russia’s interference in eastern European democracies, its annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and its role in propping up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

“I was so frustrated that the Obama administration was doing absolutely nothing against Vladimir Putin,” he said.

That all changed, of course — when Trump won a surprise election victory in November 2016.

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.