Russia, Russia, Russia: Nunes slams ‘lunatics’ in the media

FPI / March 6, 2020

Rep. Devin Nunes said he has long been one of the most fierce anti-Kremlin hawks in Congress, but the "lunatics in the media" are constantly creating out of whole cloth new ways to "insert" him into the Russia hoax.

On Wednesday’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” program on the Fox Business Network, Dobbs asked Nunes about what the California Republican considers the latest liberal misfire — this one by The Washington Post.

A Feb. 20 Post article said Nunes had met with President Donald Trump at the White House to try to get the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, fired over a secret briefing to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Nunes, who sued the Post this week for defamation, immediately denied the report.

“No one has been put into the middle of this Russia nonsense more than me, other than maybe the president, obviously the president,” Nunes told Dobbs. “Every time they resurrect the Russia hoax they insert me into it. “

“They claim that I was talking to the president, going to the White House, trying to get the director of national intelligence fired,” Nunes said. “None of that happened. I came out and said it’s demonstrably false that night or shortly thereafter. They don’t have any evidence. It’s impossible for me to have went to the White House and talked to the White House since I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There are hundreds of hundreds of witnesses who saw me there. I have a cell phone. They can take me to court. They can subpoena my phone records.”

In addition to suing the Post, Nunes has filed libel cases against CNN and McClatchy news service.

Nunes told Dobbs that the courtroom is the only place he can get a truly fair shake. “I can’t fight them by trying to argue with them or just come on your show and say it didn’t happen. That doesn’t work. Those stories live forever. So if you Google my name or go on the Internet how many fake news stories are out there that are tying me to Vladimir Putin. And it’s outrageous. For almost four years now, every chance these lunatics get ... they tied me and Trump to Russia.”

After Trump won the presidency, the liberal media pushed the Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in scores of stories, some of which even won the Pulitzer Prize.

When Republicans controlled the House, Nunes stood solidly behind Trump during the Russia investigation. As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he issued a report that said there was no election conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Kremlin – the same finding from special counsel Robert Mueller in March 2019.

Nunes "also rankled Democrats and liberal press by finding out that the Hillary Clinton campaign funded the Christopher Steele anti-Trump dossier which the FBI used to investigate Trump aides," Rowan Scarborough noted in a March 5 report for The Washington Times.

Nunes also first disclosed FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI used the dossier as its essential piece of evidence to win the approval from FISA court judges to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page

Nunes' $500 million suit against the Post in federal court in Richmond begins with this paragraph:

“Billionaire, Jeff Bezos (“Bezos”), purchased WaPo in 2013 for the purpose of using WaPo’s mighty pen to influence Federal elections. Bezos failed to defeat the GOP in 2016, in spite of WaPo’s notoriously libelous reporting. Bezos’ WaPo heavily promoted the Russian ‘collusion’ hoax between 2017 and 2019, in spite of the fact that there was no evidence that any member of the Trump campaign colluded with any ‘Russian’ to influence the 2016 Presidential Election.”

Free Press International