Saving Trump
Now Devin Nunes is using the intelligence investigation to try to bail out Trump. It’s my understanding that that’s a no-no.
Representative Devin Nunes said Wednesday that the intelligence community collected multiple conversations involving members of Trump’s transition team during legal surveillance of foreign targets after he won election last year. After Nunes went to the White House to brief Trump, the president told reporters “I somewhat do” feel vindicated by the latest development.
The committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, said Nunes’s decision to go to Trump before informing other members of the panel “casts quite a profound cloud” over whether the committee can conduct a proper investigation.
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The Intelligence Committee chairman is taking a risk in providing a measure of cover for the president. His committee is one of the congressional panels that’s supposed to be providing oversight of the investigation by the FBI and other agencies into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign. Nunes — who served on Trump’s transition team — said the surveillance that picked up Trump’s associates wasn’t aimed at Russia.
Schiff said Nunes has to decide whether he’s going to lead the Intelligence Committee or “act as a surrogate of the White House. He cannot do both.” The Democrat said an independent investigation is needed to investigate Russia’s interference and any contacts between those around Trump and the Russian government.
Schiff also said in a statement that Nunes told him the names of U.S. citizens in the intercepted communications “were in fact masked, but that he could still figure out the probable identity of the parties.” He said, “This does not indicate that there was any flaw in the procedures followed by the intelligence agencies.”
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Trump 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.
And Nunes is helping him, while leading the investigating committee. What a joke.
Having known a few spookly types in my day, I find myself wondering a few things. Were the people who showed Nunes the info today checking to see if he’s a blabbermouth? Is just talking about the existence of these reports a disclosure of classified information?
During the Clinton e-mail fooforaw, it was said by People Who Know About These Things that some subjects are not talked about even if they’re not specifically classified, and people who have their security-clearance shit together are very careful around those subjects. Nunes doesn’t strike me as someone who gets that sort of nuance.
Not quite on topic, but, well, Trump. Did you see where he took credit for the fact that Colin Kaepernick has not yet been picked up as a free agent? He’s going to show them, you see. By god, you stand up for the flag in Trump’s America.
Now, I don’t know a lot about football, but my husband does (obsessive, I suspect). He was explaining the whys and wherefores of Kaepernick not getting picked up yet, none of which seem to have much to do with what Trump said – they’re afraid of getting a nasty tweet,
He thinks people are afraid of his tweets! He doesn’t even realize we are laughing at him.
(Though I will admit, I am terribly afraid of a narcissistic bully having his hands on the reins of the largest military and the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Which has nothing to do with Kaepernick, but might have be important regarding Russia).
Ya know, you may be a “victim” of government surveillance when you are under investigation for crimes based on probable cause. That’s how things are supposed to work. You don’t get to complain about it, President Crybaby.
#1, talking through my hat here, I suspect the answer to both of your questions would be YES. If it were ever spoken about, that is.