Devin Nunes Has Turned the House Intelligence Committee Into an Oppo Research Center

Perhaps you remember a Republican attempt from a few weeks ago to invent a scandal about Sen. Mark Warner. The basic story was that Warner had tried to set up a meeting with bogeyman Christopher Steele of “dossier” fame, and … um, that was about it. It was never quite clear why this might be a scandal, but when your scandals tend to look like a serial killer’s bulletin board I suppose that every little bit helps:

Anyway, Warner is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and as Marco Rubio confirmed, Warner had already told them all about this. It turns out that Warner had sent text messages to Washington lawyer Adam Waldman asking him to arrange the meeting, and Waldman had turned over the texts to the committee. Then, somehow, those texts got leaked to Fox News. But how? Here’s Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times:

In January, one of [Devin] Nunes’s staff members requested that copies be shared with the House committee as well…

Ah. Devin Nunes. Of course. Anyway, it turns out the original texts had page numbers on them, but the copies handed over to Nunes didn’t. Guess which ones Fox News had?

The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were behind the leak….Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat, were so perturbed by the leak that they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul D. Ryan last month to inform him of their findings.

….AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, released a statement after this article was published, saying, “The speaker heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts.”

In other words, Ryan couldn’t care less. And needless to say, Nunes doesn’t care either since he’s the one who leaked the stuff in the first place. This is what the House Intelligence Committee has become: basically an R&D center for producing inane oppo research in service of Donald Trump’s latest conspiracy theories. Nice work, guys.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate