It’s looking increasingly possible that the reason Devin Nunes’ actions over the last week seem insensible is because they are just that—nonsense. A cover for the real goal, which may be something the House intelligence committee chair has already achieved.
The Monday evening regular order meeting of the committee: cancelled. The next open hearing where witnesses were to testify: cancelled. The next closed hearing at which Comey was to brief the committee: cancelled.
Without those meetings, Nunes’ fellow committee members can’t confront him over the source or nature of the information that’s led to his bizarre behavior. Without the public hearing, there will be little chance to hear the witnesses talk to the American people about the current state of the investigation. And one of these things may be particularly important to Nunes.
The first public hearing delivered a serious of unpleasant surprises for the House Republicans. They seemed to genuinely believe that FBI Director Comey was going to tell them that there was no investigation into Trump. Comey said just the opposite.
What if the word that sent Nunes screaming into the night was simply that public hearing number two was going to be much worse, and talking to Ryan and Trump had one goal: Shut down the investigation.
Tuesday, Mar 28, 2017 · 1:10:09 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
All meetings of the House Intelligence Committee for the week have been scrapped.
The full committee meetings were canceled amid an increasingly tense back-and-forth that intensified over Chairman Devin Nunes' decision to cancel a public hearing set for Tuesday, two sources on the committee told CNN.
So if the goal is simply to stall the investigation … score!
It’s not often that a Senator takes the floor in order to give an opinion on the structure of House committees, but Senator Chuck Schumer stepped out Monday afternoon to deliver a message to Paul Ryan.
"Without further ado, Speaker Ryan should replace Chairman Nunes," the Senate minority leader said from the floor. "If Speaker Ryan wants the House to have a credible investigation, he needs to replace Chairman Nunes."
Schumer’s call came after Nunes’ inexplicable behavior over the last week, in which he first spent the entirety of the open hearing on Russia asking about other topics, then followed up with his jaw-dropping press conference, and the incredible revelation that what triggered his Ryan–Trump–Press cycle last week was actually information that was generated by the White House itself.
Nunes has lost the faith of the other members of his committee, with calls for the chairman to step aside not just from the Russian issue, but from any investigation involving the transition team. After all, Nunes was a member of that transition team. His continued involvement, including hiding information and sources from other committee members, is the textbook definition of conflict of interest.
In fact, Nunes’ own statements that he has a "duty and an obligation" to brief Trump, over information he still has not shared with members of the committee is the clearest possible indicator that Devin Nunes values his relationship with Trump over his duty to Congress. His investigation has ceased to be an investigation at all. It’s become a branch of the cover-up.
It’s clear at this point that the investigation can’t continue as it is. There are two ways to go from here: special committee or special prosecutor.
On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee said that he believed a special commission was needed to look into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Republican Sen. John McCain and former Vice President Joe Biden have also called for a special committee, while the New York Times editorial board and others have called for a special prosecutor.
However, as of Monday evening, Nunes refuses to step away, or even to recuse himself from issues in which he’s directly involved.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, R-Calif., will not step aside from his committee's Russia investigation, according to a spokesman, despite a growing chorus of lawmakers calling on him to do so.
Nunes appeared on CNN Monday afternoon and attempted to pass the whole affair off as normal business. However, his description of how Congress conducts investigations does not square with the description of other Congressmen. At various times in the interview, Nunes said that he already knew the information he was going to view. At other points, he claimed to be surprised and said that the information he found was not what he had expected. But at no time did he explain why he had gone to view the information alone, or why he hadn’t requested the information be delivered to the Committee.
At several points, Nunes claimed that his real concern was about “unmasking” of Americans in surveillance reports. He also stated that the reports he saw didn’t have names, just that it was “pretty clear” who was being discussed. However, since all the reports concerned foreign conversations and possible connections to the Trump team during the transition period, the list of potential characters is quite small. It seems hard to imagine how the intelligence community could both defend the identity of this limited pool and record necessary information.
Nunes defended not sharing with other committee members, claiming to protecting his source along with his "duty and obligation" to Trump. As Senator John McCain said, Nunes appeared to be playing the role of a defense attorney for Trump rather than an impartial committee member.
None of the incidents that Nunes examined happened during the campaign period, so nothing Nunes saw in any way confirmed Donald Trump’s infamous “wiretapp” tweets.
In the end, Nunes objectivity in anything Trump-related isn’t just in doubt, it’s in tatters. His insistence that he must remain at the head of the committee is only making things worse. If Nunes is interested in finding out what happened, or giving Americans any sense that the House intends to discover the truth, he must step aside.
If his intention is to delay and discredit the entire process … he’s doing a fine job.