I have been on the Devin Nunes (R-CA) bandwagon for a long time and have lauded his performance during the impeachment farce, etc., for example, here, here, and here. In addition, when he was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, his committee published a memorandum that became the gold standard on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance abuses by the FBI and DoJ, which was released in February 2018 long before the DoJ inspector general released his own report on FISA abuses in December 2019. Everything presented in the Nunes memo has subsequently been proven to be correct. Here are the key findings from the memo:

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

Subsequently, Nunes has become a regular on Fox News over the past three years while defending the President (and exposing Adam Schiff, D-CA, his counterpart on the HPSCI and now the HPSCI chairman, as the serial liar he is) while becoming a sort of cult here among conservatives. I also carefully read Lee Smith’s book, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History, which detailed the investigative process the Nunes-chaired HPSCI complete in developing that 2018 memorandum. There were a LOT of revelations in that book with which not nearly enough Americans are familiar.

All well and good as far as that goes. However, the recent release of the 53 transcripts of people deposed by the HPSCI by the Director of National Intelligence’s office has caused me to reassess my opinion of him. Those transcripts had been withheld from public review largely at the insistence of Adam Schiff and the Democrats since the depositions were completed in early 2018 (many of them in completed in 2017). We have subsequently learned that not a single person deposed – including all of the Obama regime appointees – had seen a scintilla of evidence of Trump-Russian collusion. Not one!

Yet, for the over two years of the Mueller special counsel investigation, those same Obama hacks filled the legacy media with accusations that the President was “in the pocket of Putin,” and that it was only a matter of time before he would be removed from office, prosecuted, and incarcerated, and other variations on those themes. Adam Schiff in particular was a serial liar throughout that period, insisting that he had extensive evidence of Russian collusion that would be forthcoming in the Mueller report. Except Mueller couldn’t find any evidence of that collusion, and Schiff was caught out in one of his most egregious lies.

Yet, throughout the crucial summer and fall of 2018, when the control of the House was up for grabs, the known lies of Adam Schiff were allowed to stand and not challenged when Nunes’ own committee had depositions that destroyed the Democrat-media narrative. Why didn’t he hold a presser and make a simple public announcement to the effect that NONE of the people deposed from the Obama administration stated that they had seen any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion?

I’ve read a number of the transcripts. The statements contained therein from EVERYONE about having seen no direct evidence of Trump-Russian are not classified, as there are no sources and methods disclosures involved whatsoever in making those statements. A summary statement from Nunes concluding that no one had any evidence toward that end absolutely would not have been classified, especially as a direct counter to Schiff’s (and others’) continuing lies about supposed Trump-Russia collusion. Force Schiff to prove otherwise by releasing the transcripts (which of course would have smoked him out once and for all!). Given the gravity of the issue, hiding behind classification was no excuse for letting Schiff and the Democrats get away with their lies for three years.

That Nunes and other Republicans allowed the Democrat-media lies to go unchallenged was a dereliction of duty – unless their ulterior motive was in fact to lose the House and their chairmanships to the Democrats as part of a plan to impeach the President. Because that is exactly what happened. The Republicans lost the House almost entirely because the President remained under the false Russian collusion cloud throughout 2018. If Nunes wasn’t muzzled by RINO Speaker Paul Ryan, then he needs to explain why he allowed the President and the country to be dragged through the mud for three years when he could have PERSONALLY put a stop to it with one public statement.

Nunes, like all the other House Republican committee chairmen in the 115^th Congress, was approved and/or picked by Paul Ryan and his inner circle, and “Ryan’s rules” governed disclosure (or not) of sensitive political matters, especially relating to “Trump-Russia collusion.” I find it particularly interesting that Ryan and several of his immediate circle (and more than several known Never-Trumpers!) chose not to run for reelection in 2018. Ryan, Jason Chaffetz, Bob Goodlatte, Trey Gowdy, Darrel Issa, Jeb Hensarling, and others – at total of 39! – “retired” from the House. This was virtually an unprecedented move for some of the younger Republicans on the list. All of them would have survived and been reelected in November 2018 had the reality of no Trump-Russian collusion as detailed in the HPSCI transcripts been disclosed to the American people. And there would have been an abrupt end to the Mueller farce, no Speaker Nancy Pelosi, no Ukraine impeachment hoax, and an acceleration of the implementation of the Trump agenda through Congress over the past two years.

Why didn’t Nunes step up and do what he should have done? Why did he let Schiff and the Democrat-media complex get away with their lies when he had the goods on them? Was he fully on board with the Ryan agenda, or did Ryan prevent him from doing his duty? Or was he perfectly happy to see the President and the country put through the Mueller-Democrat-media wringer these past three years despite his many public statements on Fox News and elsewhere to the contrary? Someone needs to ask him a few direct questions about that. He has some answering to do.

The end.