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In May of 2017, Nunes’ GOP colleague of obstruction, Ted Yoho, had defended Nunes’ outrageous acts of obstruction-in leaking classified info about ‘unmasking’ all to somehow ‘clear the President.’ Ted Yoho defended him at the time with the argument that Nunes ‘works for the President, he’s accountable to the President.’
“You gotta keep in mind who he works for,” Yoho told MSNBC earlier on Thursday. “He works for the president. He answers to the president.”
“Does he?” MSNBC’s Craig Melvin challenged. “Or does he work for the constituents of his district?”
“Well, you do both,” Yoho shot back. “But when you’re in that capacity — you know, if you’ve got information — I’m OK with what he did.”
I’m ok with what he did. That’s basically the GOP answer to everything or anything Trump does-or his loyalists do in the course of obstructing justice for him. Later Yoho tried to take it back.
“Rep. Ted Yoho knows congressmen work for their constituents, not President Donald Trump, a spokesman clarified Thursday after the Florida Republican “misspoke.”
He misspoke. How did he come to misspeak in a way that led him to assert the opposite of the truth?
“He knows that every member is here because of the people that voted them into office,” Yoho communications director Brian Kaveney said in a statement. “Members work for their constituents, whether they are rank and file or if they have the honor of serving as a committee chairman. The congressman stated that he works for his constituents and not for the President. The same reasoning is applied to all members.”
But like Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are believe them the first time. Nunes-and Yoho-showed us who they are. They don’t work for the people they work for ‘President Trump.’
For his part Nunes has done everything to obstruct this Russia investigation for the faux ‘President’ right up to prematurely shutting it down in February with the ludicrous assertion they’d ‘found no evidence of collusion’ though they didn’t look for it.
But in a new hot mic moment we got what he really sees as the stakes for the race for Congress this November.
“Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, appears to have moved from criticizing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to strategizing about how to blunt its impact should it imperil President Trump.”
“The most promising instrument in this effort, he suggested in unfiltered remarks last month, is retaining a GOP-controlled Congress.”
“Even if he had been speaking publicly, the eight-term Republican might not have chosen his words differently. This, after all, is the adamantly pro-Trump lawmaker who in February released a memorandum accusing the intelligence community of conspiring against the president. In May, he sought documents from the Justice Department — as part of his investigation into the law enforcement officials leading the Russia inquiry — that senior intelligence officials maintained could expose a top source and endanger lives.”
Yes it was after those reckless actions that Yoho defended him.
“But it was in private, at a closed-door fundraiser for a Republican colleague, that Nunes took the new step of tying the investigation to the midterm elections this fall. In comments captured in an audio recording aired Wednesday by “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Nunes laid out in stark terms the rationale for preserving the GOP majority in Congress.”
“If Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones, which is really the danger,” Nunes said at an event for Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. Sessions said last year that he would keep his distance from inquiries related to the 2016 election owing to his role in Trump’s campaign — a move that has frustrated the president, leading him to blame his own attorney general for the “Russian Witch Hunt Hoax.”
“I mean, we have to keep all these seats,” Nunes added. “We have to keep the majority. If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.”
All of this goes away. Exactly. All of this obstruction of justice on this illegitimate ‘President’ goes away. What comes on the other hand is the beginning of actual oversight and accountability.
“He seemed to suggest that congressional Republicans formed the last line of defense against potential fallout from the probe into Russian election meddling. He called this a “classic Catch-22 situation,” appearing to confuse a “tough spot” — also his words — with a situation in which contradictory conditions make escape impossible.”
As Ted Lieu noted, Nunes is violating his oath of office in using it not to get to the truth and provide oversight and a check on Trump but rather as Trump’s criminal defense attorney and chief obstructor.
“The remarks drew immediate rebuke from Democrats. Rep. Ted Lieu, also of California, called on Nunes to resign, saying his comments ran counter to the oath of office he had taken upon entering Congress.”
Under our Constitution, the duty of Congress is not to clear the President. The duty of Congress is to be a check and balance on the Executive Branch, and to pursue the facts wherever they may lead.
Devin Nunes should resign for perverting the oath he took. https://t.co/ugc7CBgG39
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 9, 2018
To be sure, in a sense it’s not surprising-his actions have made plain his intention is not the truth but to defend illegitimate ‘President Trump.’
Still it’s one thing to deduce this from his actions and another to hear it in Nunes’ own words.
“Nunes also seemed to telegraph a GOP plan to impeach Rosenstein after the election. Nunes made several other noteworthy statements to the audience of GOP donors, also concerning the Russia investigation and its supervision.”
“He blamed the Senate’s schedule — and the interest in swiftly confirming Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court — for the failure of the House to take up impeachment proceedings against Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. Just days before Nunes’ closed-door remarks in Washington state, a group of conservative lawmakers introduced a resolution calling for Rosenstein’s impeachment, though they stopped short of forcing a vote on the matter. Ryan responded by saying he opposed the effort and reaffirmed his belief that Justice Department officials were acting appropriately.”
I guess the most ‘innocent’-with Nunes that word should be used advisedly-interpretation would be that Nunes’ was just offering an excuse to the deplorables for not already impeaching Rosenstein-in this more innocent scenario, Nunes doesn’t actually intent to impeach him after the election, it’s just a sop to the base. But again, this is Devin Nunes so I would never assume the more innocent explanation.
He also seems to admit that collusion is a crime contrary to what Trump and Rudy Giuliani are saying.
“The series of recordings made public by Maddow do not include every question to which Nunes was responding. But at another point during the fundraiser, he addressed the issue of collusion, considering a hypothetical situation in which a campaign received stolen emails from a foreign power and then released them, labeling this activity “criminal.”
“Now if somebody thinks that my campaign or Cathy’s campaign is colluding with the Chinese, or you name the country, hey, could happen, it would be a very bad thing if Cathy was getting secrets from the Portuguese, let’s say, just because I’m Portuguese, my family was,” Nunes said, using McMorris Rodgers as an example in his hypothetical. “But ultimately let’s say the Portuguese came and brought her some stolen emails, and she decided to release those. Okay, now we have a problem, right? Because somebody stole the emails, gave them to Cathy, Cathy released them. Well, if that’s the case, then that’s criminal.”
Of course, this is exactly what the Trump campaign did with the emails Wikileaks released.
“In the portion of his remarks played on MSNBC, Nunes neither compares nor contrasts this scenario with the release in 2016 of private Democratic communications.”
Of course, not, that would make it plain that the actions of the Trump campaign itself were criminal.
“Finally, Nunes, touted by the president as a “Great American Hero”, revealed at the fundraiser that even he sometimes winces at the Trump’s online communications. He called the president’s tweets a “mixed bag.”
“Like sometimes you love the president’s tweets, sometimes we cringe on the president’s tweets,” he said, attempting to discredit Mueller’s purported examination of Trump’s inflammatory posts as part of his inquiry into possible obstruction of justice.
“This is all political,” Nunes said.
I certainly think we can agree with Nunes on one thing: if the Dems win the election we can make this all go away.
It’s a battle for the soul of America and we either #MakeAmericaLegitimateAgain or Trump and Nunes consolidate his illegitimate regime.
UPDATE: In retrospect if Rosenstein was giving Ryan the private assurances he was giving ‘President Trump’-I can land the plane; I promise you will be treated fairly, you have such courtesy and humor in our personal conversations-we can understand why he was unconcerned.
For more on Rosenstein’s highly questionable legacy see Chapter A.
As for the GOP it wasn’t able to hold onto Congress but Trump finally got an Attorney Genera-Coverup AG Barr-who was willing to serve him rather than the agency and the Rule of Law and Nunes and the Coverup General are teaming up in faux investigations of the investigators themselves.
Still Pelosi isn’t roused to action. She claims to believe Trump wants to be impeached-so not impeaching him will show him-and while she focuses on investigations and public hearings we’ve had one public hearing in six months since the Dems were sworn in. Their currently on recess and will be recessing again in August. Yet the Speaker talks about how they won’t be rushed.
But then you hear some pundits claim that they simply won’t do anything once we get into 2020-not impeachment not even investigations. Let’s hope that’s false-as I’ve argued elsewhere impeachment should be done for principle reasons not expediency but if you want to discuss politics ideally you would want to impeach close to the election-I always joke that it should be 11 days before it like the Comey letter.