Tag: Rep. Nunes

Watch: Devin Nunes claims he was ‘stalked’ after reporter asked basic questions about his role in Trump’s Ukraine scheme

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, claimed Sunday that he was “stalked” at a $15,000-per-plate GOP fundraiser at the luxury Lotte New York Palace Hotel in Manhattan.

In reality, Nunes was approached at the GOP event Saturday by The Intercept‘s Lee Fang, who asked basic questions about the California Republican’s role in President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

“Hey, Congressman Nunes. I just wanted to ask you really quickly: What were your calls with Lev Parnas about?” Fang said, referring to an indicted associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. “Were you asking about the effort to investigate Hunter Biden?”

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Fresno Bee burns Devin Nunes to the ground in scathing editorial

AlterNet logoThe editorial board of the Fresno Bee has written a scathing takedown of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) for his extraordinary fealty to President Donald Trump, which the editors say is harming the country.

Specifically, the editorial accuses Nunes of forsaking his oath of office as a congressman to serve as Trump’s most loyal toady on the House Intelligence Committee.

“As has been true for nearly all of Trump’s first term, Nunes has relinquished his proper role as an independent representative of Congress and has instead acted like a member of the Trump 2020 re-election team,” the editorial states.

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‘You should have recused yourself’: Lawyer for Lev Parnas explains why Nunes’ participation in House impeachment hearings is a huge conflict of interest

AlterNet logoDuring the House Intelligence Committee’s recent impeachment hearings, Rep.  Devin Nunes of California was among President Donald Trump’s most vociferous and combative defenders. The Intelligence Committee’s lengthy, comprehensive impeachment report, released on Tuesday, shows that Nunes was hardly an impartial observer — and the famous criminal defense attorney Joseph A. Bondy, who is representing indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, asserted the GOP congressman had no business participating in the hearings.

Information in the House Intelligence report vividly illustrates why Nunes should have recused himself from the House Intelligence hearings: a series of conversations with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who was recently arrested for alleged campaign finance violations. In other words, Nunes’ participation was — according to Bondy — a huge conflict of interest.

Journalist Natasha Betrand has posted, on Twitter, a partial timeline of those Nunes/Parnas conversations: the two of them, AT&T records show, spoke several times on April 12, 2019. Bertrand, posting the information, tweeted, “More calls between Devin Nunes and Lev Parnas, including one that lasted 8 minutes on April 12.”

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Impeachment Investigators Got Rudy Giuliani’s Phone Records—And They’re Quite Revealing

Trump’s lawyer was in talks with, among others, Devin Nunes and officials at OMB as the president pursued a political agenda in Ukraine.

Rudy Giuliani and one of his indicted Ukrainian associates exchanged a flurry of phone calls with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the top Republican on Congress’ impeachment investigation panel, amid a Giuliani-led effort to dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s political opponents in Ukraine.

The House Intelligence Committee obtained phone records from AT&T showing extensive communications in early April involving Nunes, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and The Hillcolumnist John Solomon, according to records released in the committee’s formal reporton its investigation underlying impeachment charges against President Donald Trump.

The records shed new light on the relationship between Nunes, one of the impeachment inquiries most vehement critics, and the individuals at the center of what committee Democrats describe as an illicit campaign to weaponize U.S. foreign policy to Trump’s political advantage.

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Nunes faces potential ethics review over alleged meeting with Ukrainian official

The Hill logoRep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) could face a review of whether he violated House ethics rules by allegedly meeting with a former Ukrainian official to get dirt on the Bidens on a taxpayer-funded trip.

At least one outside group has filed a complaint against Nunes with the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which can review cases against lawmakers and refer them to the House Ethics Committee.

The Democratic Coalition, a liberal group, filed an ethics complaint against Nunes, with the OCE alleging that he violated House rules by having a conflict of interest in the impeachment inquiry if he had interactions with people under investigation and by engaging in political activity while on official business.

View the complete November 25 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

The road to expulsion: Here’s a timeline of Devin Nunes’ clandestine operations on the House Intelligence Committee

AlterNet logoNews that Devin Nunes has been sitting through the House impeachment inquiry, pretending to act as a investigator, while actually being an active participant in the scandal might be more shocking if this was the first time. Or the second. But the history of Devin Nunes’ time on the House Intelligence Committee is one that features a nearly unbroken streak of lies, corruption, and plain old idiocy.

As the machinery of the House cranks toward an another inevitable appearance of Nunes before the Ethics Committee—and Fox News opens up 10,000 hours of programming devoted to explaining why it’s perfectly okay for the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee to be traveling the world on the taxpayer dime, actively soliciting corrupt former officials for manufactured dirt that can be deployed in the 2020 election—here’s a little reminder that Double-Naught Nunes was never less than crooked. And ridiculous.

Mar 21, 2017 — Nunes leaps from an Uber car at a stoplight, leaving behind a senior Intelligence Committee staffer without explanation and disappears into the night. Nunes swaps to another car, travels somewhere, and shows up hours later to tell Paul Ryan he has uncovered evidence supporting Donald Trump’s claims that President Obama “spied” on him.

View the complete November 24 article by Mark Sumner from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Watch: Eric Swalwell calls out Devin Nunes’ own ties to the Ukraine scandal to his face

AlterNet logoRep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif, called out Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., on Thursday over his links to an indicted associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani who assisted with the effort to pressure Ukraine into launching investigations to help President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

Swalwell cited a Daily Beast report that Giuliani business partner Lev Parnas helped Nunes arrange meetings in Europe while the former House Intelligence Committee chairman led an investigation seeking to undermine former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia at Thursday’s impeachment hearing.

His comments came after Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, hit out at Republicans on the committee who have pushed a conspiracy theory welcomed by Trump that Ukraine framed Russia in the 2016 election meddling case, which she said “clearly advance[d] Russian interests.”“Dr. Hill, you cautioned us on the dangers of members of this committee perhaps peddling any Ukrainian conspiracy theories that could benefit Russia,” Swalwell said. “I want to ask you if you’ve heard the name Lev Parnas, of Ukraine, someone in this investigation who was influencing President Trump and Rudy Giuliani about some of the debunked conspiracy theories you referenced,” he added, referring to a baseless George Soros-linked conspiracy theory that led to the ouster of former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

View the complete November 22 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

GOP hypocrisy and impeachment hearings: Lindsey Graham and Devin Nunes once sang different tunes

AlterNet logoA video showing Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., during the Clinton impeachment proceedings resurfaced this week, illustrating how the Judiciary Committee chairman has reversed his stance on impeachment now that that an inquiry has been activated into President Donald Trump.

Graham, an ardent ally of President Trump, sponsored a resolution that has been co-signed by all but three Senate Republicans decrying the House impeachment probe. He told Fox News host Sean Hannity in October that any articles of impeachment against Trump should be “dismissed in the Senate without a trial.” He also called the impeachment inquiry proceedings a “lynching in every sense.”

The video from 1998, when Graham was one of the Republican House members pushing to impeach President Bill Clinton, shows that Graham was once staunchly against members of Congress dismissing impeachment before seeing all of the facts.

View the complete November 22 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Nunes Dumbfounded When Witness Debunks His Conspiracy Theory

House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes was caught off guard on Thursday when a witness in the impeachment hearings rejected a favorite right-wing conspiracy out of hand. It was an amusing and revealing moment showing how deep Nunes is in the alternative reality crafted by President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, outlets like Fox News, and others.

The moment came when he asked State Department official David Holmes about the so-called “black ledger,” which documented payments former Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort received from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. When the ledger was revealed in 2016, it prompted Manafort’s removal from the campaign, and Republicans have alleged that it was part of a plot by the country to hurt Trump. During his questioning, Nunes asked if Holmes had heard of the “black ledger.” Holmes said he had.

Holmes, who works at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, replied simply: “Yes.”

Nunes was clearly taken aback.

View the complete November 22 article by Cody Fenwick from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Local newspaper in Devin Nunes’ district wonders: Is our congressman coordinating with Trump during impeachment?

AlterNet logoThroughout the public hearings for the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Rep. Devin Nunes of California has set out to discredit the testimony of witnesses subpoenaed by House Democrats. And Nunes’ relentless defense of Trump during the hearings is leading two reporters for McClatchy Newspapers — whose portfolio includes the Fresno Bee in Nunes’ part of Central California — to wonder if Nunes is coordinating with Trump on an impeachment defense.

In an article published by the Fresno Bee on November 19, Kate Irby and Francesca Chambers note the similarities between Trump’s impeachment-related talking points and Nunes’ assertions during Tuesday’s testimony. Nunes, the reporters point out, asserted, “Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won’t give it to them straight, they’ll go elsewhere to find it — which is exactly what the American people are doing.”

Nunes, Irby and Chambers observe, also sounded very Trumpian when, on Tuesday, he expressed his desire to know the identity of the Ukraine whistleblower — inspiring House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to call him out and assert that he wouldn’t tolerate the whistleblower’s identity being revealed.

View the complete November 20 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.