On Saturday, Rep. Devin Nunes spoke at CPAC 2018 about his work as the head of the House Intelligence Committee, which has been investigating allegations of serious abuses of power by the Obama administration in surveilling the Trump presidential campaign back in 2016.
Nunes spent a significant amount of time taking the mainstream media to task for its slanted coverage of his and his Republican colleagues’ efforts to bring their findings about FBI and DOJ abuses to the public.
“What’s you’ve really seen is the collapse of the media,” Nunes argued. “Most Americans are understanding that no matter where you’re getting your news from, it’s going to be biased.” The California congressman went on to talk about how clickbait journalism and a “degradation” in the quality of reporting had seriously impacted the press’s reputation and credibility with the American people.
Nunes spoke at length about exactly what he thought the media has not been covering fairly, putting particular emphasis on his committee’s findings that top FBI and DOJ officials used the Clinton and DNC-funded Steele dossier to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign without informing judges about the document’s source of monetary support.
Despite such measures being taken by the Obama administration, Nunes told CPAC that the only “clear evidence” of collusion between Americans and Russians that his committee had seen showed Hillary Clinton working with former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and his Russian sources to dig up “dirt” on Donald Trump and then use those Russians’ allegations to improperly obtain a FISA warrant. Nunes affirmed that it was Congress’s duty to see that such abuses be exposed. “The American people deserve to know the truth…even without the support of the media, we’ll get the facts,” he reassured the audience.
Nunes also used his appearance at CPAC to comment on today’s release of the Schiff memo purporting to “correct the record” about the Trump-Russia investigation. “We actually wanted this out,” Nunes said. “We want it out because we think it is clear evidence that the Democrats are not only trying to cover [the FISA abuses] up, but they’re also colluding with parts of the government to help cover this up.” The congressman continued: “What you’re not going to see is anything that actually rejects what was in our memo.”
In response to continuous attacks from both Rep. Schiff and the media painting him as a partisan hack only out to obscure “the truth” behind Trump-Russia collusion, Nunes shot back: “We have to make sure that people are held accountable so that everyone knows that it’s never going to be okay to take dirt from a foreign actor that was essentially made up out of whole cloth and then use it against the other candidate, no matter whose candidate that is.”
Nunes’s remarks at the conference were well received by the audience and conference organizers alike. CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp personally thanked Nunes on stage for walking tall in Congress and being “a man of courage who stands for our freedom.”
The Schiff memo released today can be found at this link.