Nunes has a lot to hide

He has to protect Old Lardass because he himself is dirty.

Just last week, hours before the Republican-led House recessed for six weeks, Nunes broke out his shovel yet again to bury even deeper the evidence of Russian interference, once again demonstrating there’s no distance he won’t go to protect this president.

Nunes and committee Republicans had promised that the American people would see our interview transcripts after the investigation was completed. When they abruptly ended the investigation without calling dozens of relevant witnesses, they voted to conceal the transcripts.

Suddenly, last month, Nunes agreed to release them. Perhaps he was worried about the burgeoning campaign of his Democratic opponent — a local prosecutor named Andrew Janz, whose argument to the voters includes powerful evidence of Nunes’ efforts to poison the Russia investigation.

But predictably, at a hearing last week on releasing the transcripts, Nunes still wouldn’t allow real transparency.

Committee Democrats asked to immediately send the transcripts to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who hasn’t been allowed to see them under Nunes’ rules. There’s good reason to believe many witnesses committed perjury or offered information relevant to the special counsel’s work. But Nunes opposed it, and it was voted down.

  Rep. Eric Swalwell @ Fresno Bee

I really don't understand that. And don't try that at home.

I do think, however, that it's highly unlikely Nunes would have shown the Committee anything that Mueller didn't get in his own investigation.

Committee Democrats then moved to have the transcripts released to the public immediately — after a 10-day intelligence community review — to avoid any selective release or other political manipulation. Again, Nunes opposed this.

Surely that was no surprise. If he wouldn't let the FBI see them, he surely wouldn't want the public to.

Though incomplete due to Republican obstruction, our investigation did reveal worrisome contacts between the Russians and candidate Trump, his family, his businesses, and his campaign. Yet every time we sought to learn more, we were blocked.

We sought to test witnesses’ accounts by subpoenaing third-party records such as cell phone, bank and travel records. Republicans refused to allow it.

To arrange the infamous June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Donald Trump Jr. called his Russian contact, then called a blocked number, and then called his Russian contact back. We had evidence from other witnesses that Donald Trump used a blocked number. Republicans refused to pursue whether it was the same number.

Again something I don't understand. Why can't anyone on the committee - or at least a certain threshhold number - call for something to be investigated? Having one man - the majority leader - making the decisions is a recipe for corruption and cover-up.

The Republicans ran a “take them at their word” investigation when most of the Trump team clearly didn’t deserve that benefit of the doubt. So at last week’s hearing, I moved to subpoena many of the records that could fill a lot of the gaps. Nunes nixed it.

Reviewing his plans, we saw a glaring omission: the transcript of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s interview. I took part in that lengthy interview and I was disturbed by his contacts with Russia before and during the 2015-16 campaign. So Democrats at our hearing moved to release Rohrabacher’s transcript, plus several others; Nunes killed our effort.

[...]

The Nunes fix was in from the very start. Soon after 2016’s election, as we began to see the breadth of Russia’s interference, I had approached him with an idea: “Let’s have an independent commission look at what the Russians did,” just as we had after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We can handle this on the committee,” Nunes insisted. I was doubtful, but I never expected that by “handle,” he meant “bury.”

Well, you were very naive. Nunes was on the Trump transition team.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not giving up on Republicans. Many have told me privately that they knew Nunes and Trump were dead wrong, but they wouldn’t speak out for fear of incurring the president’s Twitter wrath. “When he tweets, he wins,” one told me.

Gutless, just as we figured.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11/19/19:

It turns out that the Mueller report indicated that, indeed, they were unable to get to the bottom of things because they were blocked, including not being allowed to see certain documents.  The tragedy of it is they stopped the investigation and declined to offer any judgment. 

And now, after Democrats have retaken the House in the 2018 elections, and impeachment hearings are being held against Donald Trump, Nunes is the minority ranking member.  Adam Schiff is in charge, and...turnabout is fair play, I guess.  Nunes is whining that the Republicans are not being allowed to call all the witnesses they want.  When in fact, the one witness they want to call is the whistleblower, whom they keep trying to out. 

The Republican Party is beyond hope.