Better Late Than Never GOP Hypocrisy. Trumpster Congressman Devin Nunes Suddenly Owns a "Show" Farm After Claiming, to Get More Votes, That He Has Been a Farmer for Years
August 19th 2019
Devin Nunes - Caricature (DonkeyHotey)
By Lisa Needham
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who has spent 2019 being comically litigious, has just gone to great lengths to insulate himself against assertions that he’s nothing but a “fake farmer.”
Before the 2018 election, some Californians challenged Nunes over his description of himself as “U.S. Representative/Farmer” on the California ballot. They pointed out that Nunes hadn’t listed any farms at all on his financial disclosure forms for several years. He’s a partner in two wineries, but those aren’t farms.
Nunes prevailed and got the “farmer” status on the ballot, but then decided it was a good idea to sue the challengers — his own constituents. In the lawsuit, he also tacked on an unrelated grievance about a freedom of information request sent to the school where his wife works.
Now, perhaps to head off additional relentless — and completely deserved — mocking, Nunes has declared he owns a farm so no one can accuse him of being a fake farmer again.
According to Nunes’s latest financial disclosure, he owns a small farm in Tulare County, but he doesn’t derive any income from it and it’s worth under $15,000.
There’s just one problem with this newfound assertion of farm ownership. Nunes has never previously mentioned he owns a farm, even though he’s required to file disclosure forms listing all his assets.
The Sacramento Bee looked at Nunes’s disclosure forms going back to 2007 and found no mention of a farm.
This creates a problem for Nunes. He could have been omitting the farm ownership from his financial disclosure forms for years and years — something he’s allegedly done previously with other businesses. Alternatively, it means he only recently purchased a farm and has been demanding the “Farmer” designation on the California ballot without actually owning a farm.
It’s unlikely that being caught in a lie will particularly disturb Nunes. As one of Trump’s most enthusiastic backers in the House, he happily declared Trump had never met with disgraced aide George Papadopoulos, despite a picture of Trump doing just that, and provided cover for Trump’s lie that Obama wiretapped him.
After all his public — and easily disproven — lies, manufacturing a farm out of thin air is probably no big deal.
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