Devin Nunes" Presence At White House Before Revealing Surveillance Info Significant | MSNBC
March 28th, 2017
Sen. Lindsey Graham joins TODAY live to talk about the controversy surrounding House Intelligence chair Rep. Devin Nunes, Neil Gorsuchs Supreme Court nomination, the failure of the Republican plan to replace Obamacare,, and more. He says that Nunes has lost his credibility and is conducting an Inspector Clouseau investigation of the Trump administrations alleged ties to Russia.
Rep Devin Nunes, Intelligence Committee Chairman One-On-One with Jake Tapper.
The Point Devin Nunes Is Making That Trump Critics Refuse To Acknowledge
Its perfectly fair to ask whether the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee should be traveling to the White House to brief the president when the FBI Director just announced that there is an ongoing investigation into whether there was any collusion between the presidents campaign and a foreign government in the past year.
But everybodys whacking Rep. Devin Nunes around like a piata right now, and its easy to forget hes raising a perfectly valid concern.
On January 12, the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote:
According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about disputes with the United States. Was its spirit violated? The Trump campaign didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a leak of classified information. Michael Flynn was not, as far as we know, a target of any U.S. government surveillance. He was one of the figures whose conversations was incidentally recorded, presumably as part of the regular monitoring of Kislyak.
People within the U.S. government are not supposed to take the information that is incidentally recorded and then run to David Ignatius because they dont like the American citizen who was recorded. Thats not the purpose of our domestic counterintelligence operations. Even if Flynn had violated the Logan Act which, as we all know, no one has never been prosecuted for violating there are legitimate avenues for dealing with that, namely going to law enforcement and a prosecutor.
(Invoking the Logan Act in this circumstance is particularly nonsensical, because the interpretation Ignatius floats would criminalize just about any discussion between a presidential candidate, a president-elect or his team and any representative of a foreign government on any matter of importance. If you ask a foreign official if his country would make a concession on Issue X in exchange for a U.S. concession on Issue Y, BOOM! Call out the SWAT teams, weve got a Logan Act violation!)
There are a lot of reasons to not like Michael Flynn, but that doesnt change the fact that somebody broke the law and leaked classified information in an effort to get him in trouble. That is wrong and that is illegal, and nunes is right to point out were going down a dangerous road when information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies about American citizens starts getting strategically leaked for partisan purposes.
Heres what Democrats and their friends in the media are too shortsighted to recognize: any skullduggery they excuse now will be used against them in the future. Anything that the Obama administration did during the transition can be done by figures in the Trump administration against future Democratic candidates.
Just about any serious presidential campaign and any presidential transition is going to speak with someone under U.S. government surveillance at some time. It seems reasonable to think that every ambassador and representative of a foreign government, but particularly those of Russia, China, and any other not-always-friendly country, is monitored 24-7 or as close to that as possible. Executives at foreign and international companies, scholars, retired officials anyone connected to a foreign government is probably a potential source of intelligence and a potential target of surveillance.
The default setting for most of the media right now is, well, the eavesdropping on Trumps transition team was incidental; no harm, no foul. But leaking of even incidental eavesdropping is harmful and is a foul. Nunes has a right to be angry, and to remind us that this strategic illegal leaking should bother us as well.
Rep Devin Nunes, Intelligence Committee Chairman One-On-One with Jake Tapper.
The chairman of the House intelligence committee said Wednesday that the communications of Trump transition officials, possibly including President Donald Trump himself, may have been scooped up in legal surveillance and improperly distributed throughout the intelligence community. (March 22) AP
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes speaks to reporters after a meeting at the White House on March 22, 2017.(Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON Facing mounting criticism Thursday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committeedefended his decision to inform President Trump about the U.S. intelligence community"s incidental collection of communications involving members of the president"s transition group, saying Trump "needed to understand what I saw.""
Rep. Devin nunes, r-calif., said he made "a judgment call"" to inform the White House and reporters about the existence of dozens of intelligence reports in which the communications of an undisclosed number of transition members and possibly Trump himself were swept up by intelligence officials following the November election.
"The president did not invite me over,"" Nunes said, dismissing assertions that he was offering the presidentcover in the face of ongoing inquiries into Russia"s possible ties to Trump associates. "I felt he needed to understand what I saw,"" the chairman said.
Nunes" disclosure, however, was made without conferring with other members of the committee or ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who raised questions that the chairman"s unilateral action undermined the ongoing committee investigation into Russia"s interference in the 2016 election.
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Schiff has since indicated that Nunes" disclosures now argue for the appointment of an independent commission to investigate Russia"s possible ties to Trump associates and whether there was any collusion between the two sides in advance of the election. That inquiry, Schiff suggested late Wednesday, appears to indicate that there is more than circumstantial evidence to indicate there was such coordination.
Democrats and some Republican lawmakers, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, also expressed alarm Thursday that Nunes" actions may have undermined the credibility of the House Intelligence panel to proceed with its inquiry. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., a member of the intelligence committee, said Thursday that Nunes apologized to the panel during a closed meeting.
Asked whether she had confidence in Nunes" continuing ability to lead the House investigation, Speier said: "My assessment will be based on the documents that he was so concerned about getting to the White House, which have not yet been shown to the full committee."
Citing Schiff"s disclosure about possible evidence of collusion, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has called for the appointment of a special counsel to resolve mounting questions about Trump associates" ties to Russian interests.
"There is still much we do not know about Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election,"" Leahy said. "But what we do know is deeply disturbing.""
FBI Director James Comey Monday acknowledged for the first time publicly that the bureau was engaged in a wide-ranging counter-intelligence investigation into Russia interference and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
At the same time, Comey dismissed Trump"s previous assertions that the Obama administration had wiretapped his New York offices in advance of the 2016 election. Comey declined to address the inquiry Thursday during an appearance at the University of Texas in Austin.
On Wednesday, Nunessaid the intelligence reports that he saw were not part of a criminal investigation or the FBI"s ongoing investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election. Rather, he said the collection was related to broader intelligence gathering activities.
