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Recently Eric Swalwell took the unprecedented step of calling out Devin Nunes in a op-end in Nunes’ hometown paper regarding the fact that not only has Nunes refused to make public many documents from the House Intel Russia investigation but that he has even withheld important information uncovered by the IC investigation from Mueller.
As I noted in an earlier chapter- find the chapter Mike-this explodes yet another GOP canard-that they had to scale back the Congressional investigation into Russia in order to avoid stepping on Mueller’s toes. This is to be sure a fiction-there was a Congressional Select Watergate Committee along with Leon Jaworski’s Independent Counsel but the fiction even fails on its own terms-if you pretend for one moment it isn’t a fiction.
But really that Nunes would do this was totally predictable-it’s been obvious that he’s one of the worst Trump hacks in the country willing to obstruct by any means necessary to protect who he sees as his boss-as opposed to the people in his California district.
UPDATE: Though he does have a very considerate cow who just went on a long campaign trip for him in California.
The hearings should have been public in the first place, let alone making them public after the fact, as Nunes also predictably failed to do-all the Republicans running the committees have refused to make them public to save ‘the President’ political embarrassment.
As for Nunes he should have recused himself. He’d sort of kinda ‘recused’ back in April, 2017 after his bizarre rushing to the Russia House with information about ‘unmasking’ that somehow was supposed to exonerate so-called ‘President Trump.’ There were so many problems with what he did there. For one thing he should have shared it with the rest of the Committee. But he just kept repeating that he had to show it ‘to the President.’ As if Trump is his boss or runs the Committee.
There’s also the question of how he even got a hold of the raw intercepts in the ‘unmasking.’ He claimed incredibly that he got them at the WH but that no one from the Administration let him in, he just walked in and started looking at raw intelligence. This was not how it happened.
After that he kind of recused-but as time would tell, not really. Indeed, it was a very slippery non-recusal.
This is what he said on April 6 right before the House Ethics Committee announced it was investigating whether Nunes broke House rules by revealing classified information in conversations with the media about the Russia investigation. Mind the phrasing:
“I believe it is in the best interests of the House Intelligence Committee and the Congress for me to have Representative Mike Conaway, with assistance from Representatives Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney, temporarily take charge of the Committee’s Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee looks into this matter,” his statement said. “I will continue to fulfill all my other responsibilities as Committee Chairman, and I am requesting to speak to the Ethics Committee at the earliest possible opportunity in order to expedite the dismissal of these false claims.”
“Nunes never used the word recuse or outlined what stepping aside meant.”
“In an interview with Fox News a few days later, Nunes said he was still handling the portion of the committee’s investigation related to whether Obama officials inappropriately requested the unmasking of the names of Trump campaign officials in intelligence documents. Unmasking is the term for revealing the names of U.S. citizens in intelligence reports who were swept up as part of surveillance of foreign officials. Their names remain secret until top officials request them.”
“Simply put, I’m still the chairman of the committee,” Nunes said. “The way to look into this is that I’m still read into everything, but … I was going to set at least the Russia side of the investigation aside because I didn’t want to be the face of this investigation. But everything else, I’m still in charge of. … Especially the unmasking.”
Regarding his assertion that he’s in charge of ‘everything especially unmasking‘ is risible as it was his conduct on the ‘unmasking’ that led to the demand for his recusal in the first place.
Especially the unmasking. In other words he’s not the face of the Russia investigation anymore but he’s still sees everything and is still in charge especially the obstructing the Russia investigation part.
He may not have used the word ‘recuse’ but he did say he’d step aside from the Russia investigation until the House Ethics Committee probe ended. It didn’t end until December 2017.
It did ‘clear’ him but there’s reason to doubt its rigor-this is, after all, the GOP House where nothing is above GOP partisanship.
Nunes continued to get involved in the Russia investigation in all kind of ways prior to December, 2017, most outrageously a bizarre field trip he took to London during the Summer of 2017 attempting to prove that the real conspiracy was against Trump.
At this point he’s probably talking a lot to Papaopoulos who’s fomenting wild counternarratives on a daily basis now.
https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1049777340551589888
UPDATE: This is yet another tweet the very much glorified Coffee Boy deleted but it was a doozy-I should have taken a screenshot.
End of UPDATE
What did Mueller say when he told him that?
It’s rather rich that Papadopolous claims to be able to totally clear Trump. Before Nunes prematurely closed down the investigation in February, 2018 he didn’t even interview him. The reality is if the so called ‘coffee boy’ had the goods to clear Trump you know Nunes would have heard from him first.
May 30, 2019- this counternarrative about unmasking, the fake scandal about Obama spying has now morphed into Coverup AG Barr’s terrifying powers to declassify any part of the Russia investigation he sees fit-no doubt to the extent that he imagines this aspect at least shorn of context to be politically beneficial to ‘President Trump.’
And not surprisingly Nunes is a major point person for Barr
House Democrats are crying foul over a plan by the Intelligence Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, to meet privately with Attorney General William Barr to push the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against officials involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Nunes’ accusations of misconduct are aimed at a slew of former FBI and Justice Department officials, who he alleges committed crimes in their pursuit of allegations that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russians to influence the election.
Nunes has in recent days foreshadowed plans to send eight “criminal referrals” — informal requests for the Justice Department to investigate — directly to Barr. He said on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Thursday night that he intends to meet with Barr “when appropriate” to discuss the referrals, and plans to bring fellow GOP intelligence committee member John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney, to the meeting. Nunes said he wouldn’t name the targeted officials publicly but would share his recommendations with Barr.
Barr told lawmakers earlier this week that he was anticipating Nunes’ information.
“I haven’t seen the referrals yet from Congressman Nunes,” Barr said during testimony to the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, “but obviously if there’s a predicate for an investigation it’ll be conducted.”
So this chapter is hardly about something in a rearview mirror-it’s gotten a lot worse now that Trump has his Roy Cohn over at AG.
Meanwhile Hakeem Jeffries is vowing Dems won’t over-investigate.
"The so-called Attorney General intentionally misrepresented the conclusions of the Mueller Report as part of an effort to fool the American people" @RepJeffries tells me. But says Democrats won't "overreach" or "over-investigate."
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) May 26, 2019
It’s a literal impossibility to ‘over-investigate’ this fake ‘President’-there are literally 500 distinct reasons to-maybe there are more than that in this book!
James Downie asks the right question: why are the Dems still dragging their feet on impeachment? With democracy and the Rule of Law in such jeopardy?
As for Nunes it’s even worse than this as we will see below-he was already giving Flynn private briefings during the campaign so it was just a natural progression to the present day with him giving Barr names from the Intel Community to politically target.
End of UPDATE
Nunes may not have used the word ‘recuse’ but he did say he’d step aside from the Russia investigation until the House Ethics Committee probe ended. It didn’t end until December 2017.
It did ‘clear’ him but there’s reason to doubt its rigor-this is, after all, the GOP House where nothing is above GOP partisanship.
Nunes continued to get involved in the Russia investigation in all kind of ways prior to December, 2017, most outrageously a bizarre field trip he took to London during the Summer of 2017 attempting to prove that the real conspiracy was against Trump.
At this point he’s probably talking a lot to Papaopoulos who’s fomenting wild counternarratives on a daily basis now.
https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1049777340551589888
UPDATE: This is yet another tweet the very much glorified Coffee Boy deleted but it was a doozy-I should have taken a screenshot.
End of UPDATE
UPDATE 2.0
May 30, 2019-As for this counternarrative about unmasking, the fake scandal about Obama spying has now morphed into Coverup AG Barr’s terrifying powers to declassify any part of the Russia investigation he sees fit-no doubt to the extent that he imagines this aspect at least shorn of context to be politically beneficial to ‘President Trump.’
And not surprisingly Nunes is a major point person for Barr
House Democrats are crying foul over a plan by the Intelligence Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, to meet privately with Attorney General William Barr to push the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against officials involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Nunes’ accusations of misconduct are aimed at a slew of former FBI and Justice Department officials, who he alleges committed crimes in their pursuit of allegations that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russians to influence the election.
Nunes has in recent days foreshadowed plans to send eight “criminal referrals” — informal requests for the Justice Department to investigate — directly to Barr. He said on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Thursday night that he intends to meet with Barr “when appropriate” to discuss the referrals, and plans to bring fellow GOP intelligence committee member John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney, to the meeting. Nunes said he wouldn’t name the targeted officials publicly but would share his recommendations with Barr.
Barr told lawmakers earlier this week that he was anticipating Nunes’ information.
“I haven’t seen the referrals yet from Congressman Nunes,” Barr said during testimony to the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, “but obviously if there’s a predicate for an investigation it’ll be conducted.”
So this chapter is hardly about something in a rearview mirror-it’s gotten a lot worse now that Trump has his Roy Cohn over at AG.
Meanwhile Hakeem Jeffries is vowing Dems won’t over-investigate.
"The so-called Attorney General intentionally misrepresented the conclusions of the Mueller Report as part of an effort to fool the American people" @RepJeffries tells me. But says Democrats won't "overreach" or "over-investigate."
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) May 26, 2019
It’s a literal impossibility to ‘over-investigate’ this fake ‘President’-there are literally 500 distinct reasons to-maybe there are more than that in this book!
James Downie asks the right question: why are the Dems still dragging their feet on impeachment? With democracy and the Rule of Law in such jeopardy?
End of UPDATE
In truth, it’s no surprise that Nunes has been totally untrustable-to use his fellow House GOPer Kevin McCarthy’s neologism. Nunes was on the Trump transition team. Before that he was in like Mike Flynn with the Trump campaign.
Devin Nunes was ‘in like Flynn’ w/Trump Campaign from the get go. As a new House Intel Cmte member, Nunes developed an alliance w/Flynn [then DIA chief]: "One of the best & most knowledgeable generals I've seen."
How is he not recused?!@Erinlank #Maddow https://t.co/JeCHrml0J1— Polly Sigh (@dcpoll) January 30, 2018
Devin Nunes was ‘in like Flynn’ with the Trump Campaign from the beginning
“The House Intel Chairman was closely allied with General Michael Flynn during his tumultuous tenure at the DIA; In spring 2016, Nunes began providing private intelligence briefings to the campaign, and after Trump secured the nomination, he traveled with and fundraised for the candidate. Limiting his role to that of “Transition Team member” has allowed major conflicts-of-interest to go unchallenged.”
In other words, a Trump campaign co-conspirator was in charge of investigating the Trump campaign. He was already giving Michael Flynn private intelligence briefings in April of 2016.
Yet he-falsely-claimed to have been impartial and to only have endorsed Trump after the GOP convention. Maybe that was publicly true but behind the scenes he was giving private intelligence briefings to Mr. Lock Her Up himself.
“An examination of open source information, however, reveals that Nunes’ involvement with the Trump Campaign was far more extensive than has been purported. In fact, Nunes had an already established, years-long relationship with Trump’s National Security Advisor — Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. He likely played an integral role in providing behind-the-scenes national security guidance to a fledgling campaign otherwise lacking in such expertise. And once Trump emerged as the party’s nominee in July 2016, Nunes’ support of Trump became absolute. In the lead up to election day, Nunes fundraised for Trump, defended him in the media, downplayed Russian interference, and secured himself an influential position on the Transition Team.”
Downplayed Russian interference. In other words he’d already made up his mind prior to: being in charge of the Russia investigation.
“Presently, Nunes serves as the lead House Republican responsible for investigating the Trump campaign’s conspiracy with Russian actors to influence the election. Yet universally, U.S. media perpetuates a revisionist version of history, limiting Nunes’ role to merely that of a post-election “Transition Team member”. This misrepresentation has allowed Nunes to skate free on clear ethics violations and continue to serve in a role for which his conflicts-of-interest are considerable.”
Note that Erin Lank of Medium wrote this in January, 2018-just a month before Nunes would shut down the probe with the Trumpian canard ‘no collusion.’ He claimed not to have seen any evidence. But before even the start of the Russia collusion investigation that he chaired he’d already made up his mind.
P.S. The picture up at the top is regarding the bombshell that Nunes and Flynn had breakfast with Turkey’s foreign minister.
Remember that after the campaign it emerged that Flynn was a paid agent of the Turkey government.
He literally changed his position on Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, over night.
He had previously defended him from Erdogan’s threats, after Turkey started paying him, he raised the possibility of kidnapping the Turkish cleric.
UPDATE 2.0 So Nunes has always been on #TeamTreasonTrump. During election he gave Flynn private briefings. During Russia investigation Nunes focused on building a counternarrative and now with Coverup AG Barr in the Russia House he now has the power to target Trump’s political enemies in IC. Yet the Dem leaders worry about -‘over-investigating’
Then there’s the fact that Nunes knew about Huma Abedin’s’ emails miraculously showing up on Weiner’s laptop in September of 2016 to boot as we see in Chapter A
Yes Oscar Wilde the best lack all conviction.