Investigate Devin Nunes

This crook has been getting away with shit for too long.

Flashback to August:

During a closed-door business meeting of the panel on Wednesday — a transcript of which was made publicly available Thursday — Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about news reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of information were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

"[M]y question ... is of the ranking member, whether he is prepared to disclose to the committee whether he has received materials that have been called into question in the public reports from Andrii Derkach and, if so, whether he is prepared to share them with the rest of the committee," Maloney asked.

"Does the ranking member wish to respond?" asked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

"No," Nunes replied.

Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received."

[...]

The officials say they sought to access the materials from Nunes at the time but that he never agreed to share them.

[...]

In late January — in the midst of the Senate’s impeachment trial — the committee’s Democratic staff reported the existence of the package to the FBI and has since received no response from the bureau, according to committee officials.

[...]

In a statement to POLITICO last week, Derkach said he sent the materials to the lawmakers and former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with the goal of “creating an interparliamentary association called ‘Friends of Ukraine STOP Corruption.’” He added that he recently notified Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Grassley, Graham, and Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon “about the content and materials published and voiced” at his news conferences. Graham, Grassley, Peters and Wyden indicated they never received materials from Derkach.

[...]

Maloney emphasized that the details about the packages he described in Wednesday’s meeting are unclassified, which suggests there is additional information in the addendum that is more sensitive.

The discussion of Nunes' receipt of a packet came after the committee voted along partisan lines to share the classified addendum with the full House. Committee officials say two dozen Democrats requested access to the addendum, requiring a committee response. Republicans voted against sharing the material, calling it an effort to distort and weaponize classified information for political gain. Nunes described the contents of the addendum as "extremely sensitive" and said he was sure the information would leak publicly if the full House were granted access.

[...]

Derkach’s website lists Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among the Republicans to whom he has sought to provide information. On Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Pompeo whether Derkach is credible, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I don’t want to comment on any particular individual like Mr. Derkach,” Pompeo said.

[...]

Before the transcript of Wednesday’s House Intelligence Committee meeting was posted publicly, Republican members of the panel spoke to friendly media outlets to allege that Maloney may have violated House ethics rules by raising questions about Nunes.

"He was very rude,” Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas told Breitbart News. “Members don’t question other members in hearings. This wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting. It was really inappropriate in my opinion, and pretty childish.”

[...]

“Russians are still trying to interfere in the election using bogus claims about events in Ukraine. So I don’t know what the secret is,” he said. “What’s in the box, is my question. Just show us and explain why it’s some big secret. We’ve literally got the receipts. The committee received this material. Why wouldn’t he share it?”

  Politico

Now flash forward to the current date:

A newly-declassified intelligence report raises very serious questions about the role top Republicans Rep. Devin Nunes and Sen. Ron Johnson played in laundering Russian disinformation during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

[...]

Johnson, you may recall, led the Senate investigation into Hunter Biden last year. Although he has denied receiving information from [Andriy Derkach, a Russia-tied Ukrainian legislator,] and laughably claimed not to know who he is, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Johnson “repeatedly cited information provided by Ukrainian official Andriy Telizhenko” as part of an effort to discredit Biden.

[...]

Then there’s Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. He has refused to say what was in a package he received from Derkach, sent to him at the committee.

[...]

Maloney, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, expressed his alarm on Deadline: White House Wednesday about how Republicans were so willing to do Putin’s bidding.

MALONEY: The fact is, is that [the Russians] were so comfortable using people like Devin Nunes that Andriy Derkach, a known Russian asset, sent information to Devin Nunes at the Intelligence Committee. We literally had the package receipt. … [It was] the same information, presumably, that Ron Johnson trying to spread around using the position in the Senate as the Chairman, at that time, of the Homeland Security Committee.

[...]

Maloney called for Nunes, Johnson and others to be held accountable. But it’s not just elected officials. Maloney also reminded us that others, such as Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, and Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, lied to Congress and to the public by over-hyping the threat that China played and downplayed that of Russia in the election cycle.

  Crooks and Liars

Definitely Barr should be investigated.

A report released Tuesday made clear that the intelligence community believed that Russia had long attacked Mr. Biden for the benefit of Mr. Trump. But throughout 2020, senior officials bowed to Mr. Trump’s hostility toward any public emphasis of the threat from Russia, and they offered Congress and the public incomplete or misleading portraits of the intelligence on foreign influence in the election.

[...]

Their efforts allowed Americans to dismiss a widely accepted intelligence assessment as politics, deepening distrust and division among the electorate, current and former officials said, adding that a divided country was vulnerable to foreign interference.

[...]

The newly released report, former Trump administration officials argued, blurs the definitions of influence and interference. Russia’s effort was always more about spreading misinformation and propaganda, the former officials said, and there was no evidence that the Kremlin changed votes, the report’s definition of interference.

[...]

[T]he designated election security czar, Shelby Pierson, was consistent in how she portrayed Russian actions in briefings to Congress, according to people familiar with her testimony.

But one of her briefings, in which Ms. Pierson told lawmakers Russia favored Mr. Trump and was working for his re-election, prompted outrage among Republicans and contributed to the ousting of Joseph R. Maguire as the acting director of national intelligence.

[...]

[T]he intelligence community ombudsman said in January that there were substantive differences between talking points for briefing Congress and what the intelligence community really thought.

The newly declassified report showed that the March briefing was at best misleading to Congress and backed Ms. Pierson’s February testimony.

[...]

While some senior intelligence officials have suggested that intelligence on Russia was in flux at various points in 2020, the new report made clear that the intelligence community’s view on President Vladimir V. Putin’s support for Mr. Trump was little changed from 2016 to 2020.

Senior Trump administration officials’ comments about China were also at odds with the report.

John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s final director of national intelligence, said publicly before and after the election that China was the greatest national security threat.

[...]

Some intelligence officials defended Mr. Ratcliffe’s comments on China, noting that Beijing was the most serious long-term threat to the United States and that it clearly tried to influence how it was viewed in America and elsewhere. The January ombudsman report did find merit in Mr. Ratcliffe’s critique of how intelligence on Chinese influence operations was handled.

[...]

Mr. Ratcliffe’s relentless focus on China, rather than Russia, had the effect of leaving the impression, particularly with the president’s most enthusiastic supporters, that China was the most urgent threat to the 2020 election.

The new report rejected that assertion.

  NYT

All of this may shed some light on Maloney's aggressive questioning of Gordon Sondland at the November impeachment hearing.