Nunes

The Dual Roles Of Devin Nunes Raise Questions About House Investigation

... team, has also at times used his position as chair of the intelligence committee in ways that seem aligned with the interests of the White House. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) speaks to journalists about an upcoming investigation hearing on Capitol Hill on March 24. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post). The committee’s course so far has raised concerns about whether it can serve the mission it was given when it was created in the 1970 s, putting critical matters of national security above partisan politics. Former Republican congressman Mike Rogers, who was Nunes’s predecessor as chairman, said that both sides have struggled so far to live up to that historic mandate. “It sows distrust, it shows they don’t have a good working foundation for really hard things,” Rogers said. “Everybody wants to find what they want to find to affirm their political ...

Trump Son-in-law Met Executives Of Sanctioned Russian Bank, Will Testify

... son-in-law met executives of sanctioned Russian bank, will testify. By Elena Fabrichnaya , Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle | MOSCOW/WASHINGTON. MOSCOW/WASHINGTON A Russian bank under Western economic sanctions over Russia's incursion into Ukraine disclosed on Monday that its executives had met Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, in December. A U. S. Senate committee investigating suspected Russian interference in the election wants to interview Trump associates, including Kushner, 36, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and has agreed to testify. Kushner previously acknowledged meeting the Russian ambassador to Washington last December and only on Monday did it emerge that executives of Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) had talks with Kushner during a bank roadshow last year. The bank said in an emailed statement that as part of its preparing a new strategy, its executives met representatives of financial institutes in Europe, Asia and America. It ...

Trump Surveillance Claim May Hurt Nunes Despite Apology 1

... and his aides have tried to deflect attention from the probe of Russian meddling by focusing on the assertion that they were the victims of surveillance and through complaints that information about the investigation - and contacts between Trump allies and Russian officials - have been leaked by the intelligence community. Trump opened the debate over spying on his transition team on March 4, asserting that former President Barack Obama tapped his phones. His spokesman later said that shouldn’t be taken literally and referred generally to having his team under surveillance. Comey told Nunes’s panel on Monday that “I have no information that supports those tweets.”. (Updates with Nunes declining to disclose his sources in 21 st paragraph.). To contact the reporters on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at __link__, Billy House in Washington at bhouse __link__. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at __link__, Larry Liebert. ©2017 Bloomberg L. P. Latest from the SFGATE homepage. Click below for the top news from around ...

Did Nunes’ Disclosure Of Secret Intelligence Data Violate The Law

... he and his Republican colleagues appeared to advocate on Monday. “I don’t know, but of course it’s a concern,” said Sen. John Mc Cain, the Arizona Republican who on Wednesday called Nunes’ statements “bizarre.”. What was clear, Mc Cain said, was that the House Russian investigation was now deeply tainted by at least the perception of partisanship in Congress. “This has been my point from the beginning, we need an independent setup. This is clearly another example of why.”. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a known privacy advocate who has long expressed concerns about classified surveillance and its potential for abuse, said Nunes’ statements have to be seen in the light of Monday’s hearing. “You should compare what Mr. Comey said on Monday about the release of classified materials with what Mr. Nunes said” on Wednesday, he admonished. Then, offering his own comparison, he concluded: “It certainly doesn’t meet my definition of vigorous oversight” of classified ...

Devin Nunes Sees The Headlights

... over Trump briefing. LA Daily News: Here come new machines to produce more change at superhuman speed. It’s being called the fourth wave of industrialization, a technological revolution affecting almost every industry in every country. East Bay Times: The Lake Oroville spillway disaster has been a public-relations nightmare from the beginning, but DWR keeps making matters worse with its words and actions. Charlotte Observer: Millions of working-class Americans enthusiastically supported candidate Donald Trump because they were convinced he would help them better share access to the country’s wealth. President Trump has spent the past several days betraying those voters in a desperate attempt to score a political victory. Lexington Herald Leader: At a time when political and religious divisions are unusually inflamed, why make battlegrounds of schools? And who wants to be the principal who must defend the Campus Crusade for White Supremacy’s membership policy. David French, National Review: We have more than 200 years of history demonstrating that our ...

Trump Transition Communications Were Swept Up In U.s. Spying On Foreign Targets, Rep. Nunes Says

... into whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian intelligence agencies that sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential race, Nunes said. "Details about U. S. persons involved in the incoming administration with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reports," he said. Under the law, identities of Americans whose communications are picked up by intelligence eavesdropping of foreign targets are supposed to be kept confidential unless the conversations relate to espionage or some other potential crime that warrants further investigation. FBI Director James B. Comey and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers testified to Nunes' committee on Monday that they had "no information" to back up President Trump's claims in several tweets this month that President Obama had ordered wiretaps against him. Nunes and other Republicans used the five-hour hearing to argue that leaks of classified information, ...

Harsh Portrayal Of Their Hometown Congressman Devin Nunes Riles His Neighbors And Friends

... and pistachio trees, and has known Nunes well before he was elected to Congress more than 14 years ago. “This B. S. that he milks cows from Podunk and shouldn’t be on the intelligence committee – c’mon,” Watte said. “It’s just a continuation of, I guess, Trump’s election. They need to get over it.”. In the agricultural community of Tulare, the Nunes family is known for working hard and speaking plainly, Watte said: “There’s no beating around the bush. They are straight ahead. What you see is what you get.”. Nunes, whose district has been safely Republican with a 43-33 percent voter registration advantage for the GOP over Democrats, lives in Tulare and often comes home to see his family. The Nuneses live in a gated community named Presidential Estates, where a three-bedroom, three-bath home lists for $340,000. Judy Medcalf, a retired piano teacher, is a neighbor who rejects the national media’s negative portrayal of the congressman. “I think it’s ridiculous,” she said Friday as she and her husband, Robert, a retired pastor, exited through the entry gate to Presidential Estates. “Washington is a broken thing, and I think it’s more of the same. I think we need to ...

Kushner Offers To Meet With Senate Intel Committee Over Russia Meetings

... effectively revived Trump's wiretap claims by reporting that Trump's own communications may have been picked up in "incidental" collections by domestic spies. Nunes then went to Trump directly with his findings - but never told Democrats on his own committee. Trump said he felt "somewhat" vindicated by Nunes' findings. The fiasco set off a firestorm of allegations from top Democrats that Nunes was colluding with the White House - something Nunes has denied. He also later apologized to Democratic members of the committee. Democrats were up in arms Friday as well after they said Nunes arbitrarily canceled a public hearing scheduled for this Tuesday, and said he would replace it with a closed-door briefing from Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers. (Nunes said he was only delaying their second public hearing.). But Nunes also canceled the closed briefing with Comey and Rogers, Monday, saying that they would try to reschedule. "Director Comey and Adm. Rogers could not come in tomorrow as we'd hoped, so the Committee will continue to try to schedule a time when both of them can meet with us in closed session," Nunes spokesman ...

Through The Looking Glass With Trump And Nunes

... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Nunes “a stooge of the president.”. The House intelligence committee’s ranking Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff of California, was appalled, telling reporters Nunes must “decide if he’s leading an investigation” or is “a surrogate of the White House. Because he cannot do both.” Schiff also said that evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia was “more than circumstantial.”. Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat on the committee, was incredulous Nunes would scurry off to brief a president “who is potentially a target of this investigation. No — it’s beyond absurd,” Himes told CNN, practically sputtering in disbelief. It reminded me of Alice telling the Red Queen that one cannot believe impossible things. The Queen, accustomed to her bizarre world, retorted: “I daresay you haven’t had much practice.”. For us down in this rabbit hole, I daresay we’re getting too much practice. Indira A. R. Lakshmanan in a Washington ...

Top Democrat Throws The Hammer Down On Nunes, Demands He Recuse Himself From Russia Probe

... to Russia, with ranking Democrat Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee now urging the GOP committee chairman Devin Nunes to recuse himself from the probe. Video from MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. In a statement released earlier, Schiff said, “I believe that [Nunes] should recuse himself from any further involvement in the Russia investigation, as well as any involvement in oversight of matters pertaining to any incidental collection of the Trump transition, as he was also a key member of the transition team.”. “This is not a recommendation I make lightly, as the Chairman and I have worked together well for several years,” Schiff said. The statement comes after Nunes tried to give Trump political cover last week by revealing irrelevant information – from the White House, mind you – that the intelligence community picked up incidental evidence from the Trump transition team. The information does nothing to vindicate Trump’s insane claim about President Barack ...