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In early December 2016, Devin Nunes was growing suspicious.

The political and media establishment, still struggling to cope with the news of Donald Trump’s victory, was beginning to claim that Russian cyber meddling explained the surprising outcome. On Dec. 9, 2016, big media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post began laying out the contours of what would become the dominant and relentless media narrative of the next several years: Trump had conspired with Russia to steal the election and should not be viewed or treated as a legitimate president.

Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), was a long-time Russia hawk who had spent years concerned about the United States’ lack of preparedness for Russian cyberattacks. But something didn’t sit right about the how the media and other activists were arriving at the narrative.

For one thing, the claims were significantly at odds with the official reports from the intelligence agencies his committee oversaw. For another, the press reports were fed solely by dubiously selective and anonymous leaks from intelligence officials.

“I am deeply concerned that these press reports may contain unauthorized disclosures,” Nunes wrote on Dec. 12, 2016, to President Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, instructing him to have intelligence agencies send to Congress any new assessments that had been reported in the press. He expressed concern about the “manipulation of intelligence for political purposes” two days later. By December 16, having received none of the new assessments that anonymous leakers to the press claimed existed, he vowed to vigorously investigate intelligence agencies’ handling of the Russian meddling issue.

He had no idea at the time, but Nunes’s early skepticism of the “Russia collusion” plan to undermine the Trump administration put him in the crosshairs of all of the most powerful forces in Washington, including the media, the Democrat Party, left-wing special interest groups, intelligence agency officials, and even many Republicans.

Nunes’s dogged pursuit of the truth paid off, eventually, but it wasn’t easy. The “Russia collusion” narrative caused untold damage to the Trump administration and its policy goals. It sparked a years-long special counsel probe that pursued scores of Trump associates but found none who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Journalists won Pulitzers and other prizes for perpetuating the false narrative. Even now, many Democrats still cling to claims of Trump being controlled by Vladimir Putin.

However, Nunes overcame the media and Democrat hysteria, as well as stonewalling and obstruction by the FBI and Justice Department (DOJ), including threats to his own staff, to uncover the FBI’s use of an unverified dossier of outlandish allegations in the warrants to spy on Carter Page, a Trump campaign associate. He revealed rampant “unmasking” by Obama officials against Trump transition members, and the fact that FBI agents who interviewed Trump’s first National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn didn’t think he was lying.

He waged a court battle with the inventors of the dossier to find out that their work was secretly funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. And he revealed how that group employed Nellie Ohr, the wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who was used to funnel questionable anti-Trump information to the FBI from his wife and her associates.

He also overcame the concerted efforts to destroy him and his reputation, remove him from committee leadership, prevent his re-election, and to get him to pull back from his work through threats against family members.

Later today he is expected to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Water, Water, Water

That Nunes would have the fortitude to take on the political and media establishments was not completely obvious when he was first elected to Congress in 2002. He was all of 29, representing a congressional district in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California, where he grew up. From a family of dairy farmers — a point that a critic on MSNBC would later use to dismiss him as ignorant — Nunes was known for his fierce advocacy of his constituents’ interest.

read more:

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/04/devin-nunes-tells-the-truth-until-it-hurts/