Devin Nunes: My Lawsuit Against the Washington Post, FISA Abuse, and More

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been at the center of a firestorm since President Trump was elected in 2016. While serving as the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he signed out a memo on FISA abuse in January 2018 that made two key conclusions:

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Our findings … 1) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveil1arice Court (FISC), and 2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established t6 protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.

The memo was totally panned by Democrats and their lickspittle media allies while the ranking member of the House Intel Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) hastily produced a “counter-memo” that disputed all of the Nunes memo’s findings while claiming that, for example:

  • Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the FBI’s decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.
  • DoJ’s October 21, 2016 FISA application and three subsequent renewals carefully outlined for the Court a multi-pronged rationale for surveilling Page.
  • The Committee Majority’s memorandum, which draws selectively on highly sensitive classified information, includes other distortions and misrepresentations.

As we now know, the Justice Dept Inspector General’s December 2019 report on FISA abuse (available here) proved that the Nunes memo was 100% right and the Schiff memo was completely false.

Nunes has been relentlessly targeted by the Democrat-media complex because he was spot on as he identified DoJ/FBI corruption while defending the President during the Russia hoax, as well as subsequently during the Democrats’ impeachment farce. He is continually attacked in the legacy media to the point that he is fighting back with lawsuits against “news” organizations that have published blatantly false stories about him. An example of that was previously detailed in this article about his lawsuit against McClatchy Publishing, which has subsequently filed for bankruptcy.  (Imagine that!)

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Nunes was interviewed this week by Lou Dobbs about his new lawsuit against the Washington Post and other topics. Here is some of the Q&A:

Dobbs: We just don’t know what Sen. Graham’s doing [about investigating FISA abuse and Ukraine corruption]. Here is Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Let’s start out with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) going after Burisma while the rest of the Senate seems to be paralyzed. Your thoughts?

Nunes: This should have happened during the impeachment hoax. Remember when we said … Republicans … look, we’ve had in investigation into Ukraine’s meddling while Ukraine was targeting President Trump. Through all that now, it’s pretty obvious because of all the news stories that have come out that clearly whatever happened with the big contract that Hunter Biden got should have been answered during the impeachment hoax and would have had Republicans been able to call witnesses. Now that the Senate Republicans have control, Ron Johnson has been a good ally … he’s very familiar with the FISA abuse and the Russia hoax and the impeachment hoax. If this was a Republican – a son of a Republican or a sibling or any relation to a Republican senator or congressman – it would be front page on every major newspaper in the country … on every news show. It would probably be equal to the free air-time that Biden has gotten since Saturday – which is a lot!

Dobbs: The FISA court … do you support the President in seeking reform to that?

Nunes: Yeah. It’s important for people to know about FISA that the FISA court was put in because of abuse, so we have to keep the FISA system, but Title I of FISA that’s been in law since the late 1970s needs to be changed. We can’t allow our intelligence agencies and this court to be weaponized against a political party. The President is exactly right. We’ve had many members … Republicans … who are on the same page that we have to change Title I of FISA to make sure these abuses don’t happen.

Dobbs: It’s clear that we’ve got to reform the uppermost levels of the FBI – politically corrupt without question – and the Justice Dept.

Nunes: The Democrats are going to try to sweep this under [the rug]. There’s a section of FISA that’s up for renewal right now, and I think they’re going to try to sweep this under the rug. Look, FISA does a few good things; it keeps us safe. But at the same time, it can’t be used to target us [for politically motivated reasons].

Dobbs: You and the Washington Post in an extraordinary battle – a lawsuit against them seeking to right wrongs by the Washington Post in which you say flatly that they’re lying.

Nunes: It’s been very frustrating, and that’s why I’ve created this website, defendusa(dot)com, that I’d like people to go to and join my fight because no one has been put into the middle of this Russian nonsense more than me. Other than maybe the President. Every time they resurrect the Russia hoax, they insert me into it. And before the coronavirus new narrative hit and took over all the media’s time, we were on Russia hoax 9.0 or whatever the hell it was. They claim that I was talking to the President, going to the White House, trying to get the head of the Director of National Intelligence fired. None of that happened. None of it happened. I came out and said it’s demonstrably false … that night or shortly thereafter … and they don’t do anything about it. They don’t take the story down. And then when I said I’m going to file in court … which is what I’ve been telling a lot of these news media outlets … so I file in federal court … and I’ll bet you this. It’s just like every other lawsuit I have against CNN and others … the same thing happens every time. They never want to show up in court. Because they don’t have any evidence [to confirm their claims in the original story]. It’s impossible for me to have gone to the White House or talk to the President since I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma [at the time claimed in their story]. There is multiple … hundreds and hundreds of witnesses saw me there. I have a cell phone. They could take me to court. They could subpoena my phone records. There’re call logs. I didn’t talk to the President of the United States [as they claimed].

Dobbs: And you have offered that to the Washington Post … you have declared that their story is wrong, and they say …?

Nunes: We don’t know what they’re going to say because we sued them in federal court, so now they have time to go to the court. But my guess is, they’re going to be like everybody else. They’re not going to want to come to the table. The court is the only fair place that I have to get a fair day in court. But I can’t fight them by trying to argue or come on your show and say it didn’t happen. Those stories live forever [on the web], so if you google my name or go on the internet, how many fake news stories are out there that are tying me to Vladimir Putin? And it’s outrageous when, for a long time, I was known as one of the top Russian hawks in the Congress. I’ve been the guy that was predicting that the Russians were up to no good, and now for almost four years, every chance these lunatics get … they tie me and Trump to Russia.

Dobbs: And it’s driven, you believe, by purely ideological cant ….

Nunes: I think there are a lot of reasons, but clearly they’re acting with malice … and reckless disregard for the truth because they’re mad, and everything that I’ve said – whether about FISA abuse, that the Russia thing was a hoax, that the Ukraine thing was a hoax – everything I’ve said has been proven 100% accurate.

Dobbs: And you also did something 100% unforgivable in the eyes of the Washington Post, it would seem – you have defended the President of the United States.

Nunes: Yeah, they don’t like that either.

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End of the Q&A. Here is a summary of the key points made:

  • Burisma corruption should have been fully investigated and disclosed during the Democrats’ impeachment hearings in the House, but Republicans could not call fact witnesses to get to the truth of the matter
  • He pointed out the media hypocrisy in their silence about Hunter Biden versus what would have happened to a son of a Republican politician
  • He fully supports Sen. Johnson’s efforts to investigate Burisma and the Bidens
  • While FISA serves a useful purpose, Title I of the FISA needs to be revised to protect the civil liberties of American citizens against politically-motivated abuse
  • Nunes has proof that the Washington Post lied in the article for which they were sued
  • He has a website in which Americans can join the fight against the legacy media’s continuing slandering of Republicans who support the President: defendusa(dot)com

The end.

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