November 22, 2019

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH

A March 30, 2017, New York Times article captures a defining moment in the long involvement of Devin Nunes (R-CA) in defending and promoting Donald Trump’s claims regarding the “Deep State,” Russian involvement in the 2016 election and the promotion of Vladimir Putin’s interests in general.

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Initially, however, it’s important to identify the different Trump theories regarding Russian interference in US elections. First, there is Trump’s denial that Russia intervened on his behalf in the 2016 election, including Russian trolling in social media, its manipulation of pro-Trump US media, possibly hacking voting machines, and its involvement in hacking the DNC servers to retrieve emails that were embarrassing to Hillary Clinton. The latter accusation was confirmed in the Roger Stone trial, where it was revealed that the Trump campaign received the purloined emails via WikiLeaks (and possibly opening up Trump to perjury charges in his written Mueller testimony).

Contrary to the White House and Bill Barr spin, the Mueller report confirmed all the other Russian intervention strategies on behalf of Trump in 2016 and Trump campaign interaction with Russians. Mueller did find “significant evidence,” as the American Bar Association states, of Trump campaign members coordinating with, cooperating with and encouraging Russian involvement. Indeed, in July of 2016, Trump publicly and brazenly asked the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s Emails by asking, “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails.” Mueller also found that the Trump campaign benefited from the Russian intervention. (Mueller also documented 10 potential obstruction of justice charges committed by the Trump administration in relation to his investigation.)

In addition, Trump has, frequently, absolved Putin of interfering in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf. This reached a zenith when on July 16, 2018, Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki in which he infamously asserted, at a post-meeting news conference, that he had asked Putin if he had intervened in the 2016 election, that Putin told him “no,” and that he believed him. CNN covered the astonishing statement with an article headlined, “Trump sides with Putin over US intelligence.”

Second, Trump early on promoted the accusation that Obama ordered the “Deep State” intelligence community, particularly the FBI, to illegally spy on his campaign — because of alleged connections between some of Trump’s campaign staff and Russian contacts — on behalf of the Democrats and specifically Hillary Clinton

Third, Trump subsequently latched onto an InfoWars conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and that Ukraine was responsible for obtaining the DNC emails, which Trump alleges are still stored on a server hidden away somewhere in Ukraine.

One of the loudest voices in support of all three Trump Russia-enabling falsehoods in the House has been Nunes. As majority leader of the House Intelligence Committee until January of 2019, when Adam Schiff took over the reins after the Democrats took control of the House, Nunes took every opportunity to back Trump in his efforts to try and prove that the Russians were being unfairly accused and that the "Deep State” was out to take Trump down.

So it is was not surprising that in a March 30, 2017, story the NYT reported:

A pair of White House officials helped provide Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The revelation on Thursday that White House officials disclosed the reports, which Mr. Nunes then discussed with Mr. Trump, is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the presidential election.

Nunes, the Times reports, was riding in an Uber on the night of March 21, 2017, when he got a call from “a source” and quickly diverted to the White House compound, where he was shown alleged evidence of intelligence service surveillance of some members of the Trump campaign because of their contacts with Russians determined to be acting on behalf of the Russian government. The next day, before informing the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes “briefed” Trump on what he had been shown, which was odd because both of the sources allegedly worked in the White House and likely had already alerted Trump to their “findings.” It was all orchestrated and music to Trump’s ears, since he had been falsely asserting that then President Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump’s residence in his New York Trump Tower.

Ultimately, Nunes’s vigorous efforts to bolster’s Trump’s claims aimed at absolving the Russians and eliminating his fears that the Russian election interference allegations were delegitimizing his presidency led to a House Ethics Committee hearing that resulted in his being removed as head of the Intelligence Committee Russia investigation.

However, that didn’t stop Nunes from running an unofficial parallel investigation, with the likely support of Trump, that resulted in a document called the “Nunes Memo,” released, after he resumed the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, on February 2, 2018. It accused the FBI of abusing the FISA process to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign aide Carter Page and also, in general, claimed that the FBI was not justified in monitoring Russian-related aspects of the Trump campaign. Then Ranking Minority Leader Adam Schiff was furious, and the Democrats wrote a 10-page rebuttal that was initially blocked from release by Trump, but finally saw the light of day on February 24 of 2018.

Nunes’s memo was meant to undercut the Mueller investigation by claiming that its origins were illegal in nature.

This one example of Nunes’s loyal support of Trump conspiracy theories is being reborn with the Bill Barr AG investigation of the so-called “spying” on the Trump campaign and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report to be released on December 9.

According to a November 21 CNN article about the upcoming “report,”

An FBI official is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, several people briefed on the matter told CNN.

The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, as we have heard throughout the public phase of the impeachment inquiry, Nunes has repeatedly supported Trump’s conspiracy theory that the Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election and on behalf of Hillary Clinton, not Trump. Trump’s shorthand for this bizarre claim meant to further ingratiate Trump with Putin is known by the moniker “CrowdStrike,” which Trump wanted Zelensky to look into on the infamous July 25th call.

On November 21, Fiona Hill, a former member of Trump’s National Security Council demolished the CrowdStrike alternative reality conspiracy theory as false and dangerous. She asserted that those politicians who promote the CrowdStrike theory are repeating Russian talking points and doing the work of Putin. She blasted politicians who are assisting in Trump’s acquiescence to Putin as she said,:

Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves….

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified….

I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interest. These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes.

Hill was unfazed by the hostile questions of the Republican Trump cult loyalists. She warned that Putin had been successful in weakening democracy in the US, forcing a partisan divide, enhancing Russian power and its sphere of influence. She also expressed concern that this is likely to happen again in 2020 unless preventative measures are taken.

Nunes, for his part, had his hand forced when he was alerted to the advance copy of Hill’s testimony. As a result, he got his staff to quickly produce a March 22, 2018, House Intelligence Committee report (released in redacted form on April 27, 2018), from when he was chairman, that he claimed showed that the Republicans acknowledged Russian election interference.

Schiff had objected to the report at the time: "Their report, as with their overall conduct of the investigation, is unworthy of this committee, the House of Representatives, and most importantly, the American people, who are now left to try to discern what is true and what is not," Indeed, an NPR article announcing its release was headlined, “House Intelligence GOP Releases Full Report Clearing Trump In Russia Imbroglio.” This was the goal of the Nunes GOP 2018 report, even if it reluctantly conceded some Russian election interference.

Indeed, even at Thursday’s hearing, Nunes was up to his neck in alligators in helping Putin weaken US support for Ukraine, and thus enhancing the InfoWars CrowdStrike conspiracy. According to The Washington Post:

A contractor for the Democratic National Committee who reached out to Ukraine's embassy was “one of several indicators of Ukrainian election meddling in 2016, all of which were aimed at the Trump campaign,” Nunes said. “Once you understand that Ukrainian officials were cooperating directly with President Trump's political opponents to undermine his candidacy, it's easy to understand why the president would want to learn the full truth about these operations and why he would be skeptical of Ukraine.”

As Hill earnestly warned with alarm, and David Holmes reaffirmed under questioning, the Trump attempt to extort and disparage Ukraine only benefits the interests of Putin and Russia. Trump has repeatedly signaled to Putin that his commitment to Ukraine is tentative. He has condoned Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, He has humiliated Ukraine President Zelensky to the delight of Putin. He once expressed that many of the Ukrainian people like Russia: ”I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are actually one people.”

As The Daily Beast described in a November 16 article, entitled, “Russia Loves the Impeachment Hearings Because GOP Is Parroting Kremlin Propaganda”:

The ongoing impeachment inquiry is a twofold gift for the Kremlin. On the one hand, President Trump and the Republican Party are doing Putin’s work by assailing U.S. intelligence agencies, career diplomats and institutions. On the other hand, the impeachment inquiry revealed an unprecedented rift between the United States and Ukraine—America’s strategic partner that enjoyed decades of strong bipartisan support.

Witnesses in the impeachment inquiry laid bare President Trump’s reported indifference toward Ukraine’s plight of deterring Russian aggression—treating this fledgling democracy as a mere tool for his personal needs, while disregarding national interests of the United States.

On October 23, Natasha Bertrand reported for Politico that the Nunes support for Trump’s support for Putin and denigration of Ukraine had come full circle:

A protégé of Republican Rep. Devin Nunes was among those passing negative information about Ukraine to President Donald Trump earlier this year, fueling the president’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.

Kashyap Patel, a longtime Nunes staffer who joined the White House in February, was so involved in the issue that at one point Trump thought he was in charge of Ukraine policy for the National Security Council, according to congressional testimony by Fiona Hill, the former senior director for European and Russian Affairs whose portfolio included Ukraine.

Who would have ever thought the Republican Party would become the party of enabling Russian goals to weaken US democracy, creating fissures in Europe and advancing Russian hegemony in countries such as Ukraine?

On November 22, The New York Times revealed in an article that recently,

In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. [Fiona] Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a years-long campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.

The revelations demonstrate Russia’s persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points. American intelligence agencies believe Moscow is likely to redouble its efforts as the 2020 presidential campaign intensifies. The classified briefing for senators also focused on Russia’s evolving influence tactics, including its growing ability to better disguise operations.

Devin Nunes, like his cabal master, Trump, is a Putin puppet, and our national security is perilously threatened as a result.

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