Trump hails Devin Nunes as an impeachment hero, the ‘other side’s worst nightmare’
At a celebration of President Donald Trump’s Senate acquittal, Trump on Thursday highlighted Rep. Devin Nunes as a Republican hero of the impeachment proceedings.
Nunes, R-Tulare, received a standing ovation in the White House East Room for his defense of the president in the House of Representatives, where he’s the top-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
“He’s the other side’s worst nightmare,” the president said. ”This guy goes down into dungeons and basements. He’ll find a document no matter what. He’s the most legitimate human being. He’s the hardest worker.”
Trump said that Nunes endured “tremendous abuse” from the media and “the bad ones, the leakers, the liars, the dirty cops.”
“They wanted to destroy him. They tried. They got close. But he wouldn’t let it happen,” Trump said of Nunes, who stood and waved as the president named-checked him.
Trump also alluded to Nunes’ work in 2017 when he was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a position Nunes used in part to investigate the origins of allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Those allegations later became the subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Nunes was “unbelievable,” Trump said.
Nunes was on Trump’s White House transition team before he took office, yet Trump said on Thursday at the event, “I didn’t even know him. I just heard that there was this congressman who kept going into a basement, into files.”
“He knew something was wrong. He felt it, right?” the president said. “Hopefully we’re going to take care of things, because we can never ever allow this to happen again.”
‘Midnight run’
Trump’s description of Nunes going into files was likely a reference to the so-called “midnight run,” when on March 21, 2017 Nunes went to the White House grounds and obtained information he used at a press conference days later.
At the press conference, he asserted that none of the FBI monitoring of Trump campaign members “was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team.”
At the time, Nunes did not disclose that he obtained information from the White House. He stepped back from some of his role as House Intelligence Committee chairman after Democratic groups filed ethics complaints alleging Nunes improperly shared confidential information at his press conference.
Nunes eventually was cleared by the Ethics Committee.
Nunes has not disclosed who he met with, or how he knew to go to the White House for the information.
He told author Lee Smith that the “midnight run” actually took place in daylight, and that he went to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and “I got my hands on the documents I was looking for and the next morning briefed (former House) Speaker (Paul) Ryan on it.”
Nunes in Smith’s book, “The Plot Against the President,” acknowledged someone helped him get the documents. “I wouldn’t have known where to find the records without the sources.”
“The problem that he’s created is he’s gone off on a lark by himself, sort of an Inspector Clouseau investigation here,” Graham told The Today Show in 2017. “The only way this thing can be repaired is he tells his colleagues on the House Intel committee who he met with and what he saw and let them look at the same information.”
Nunes at House impeachment hearings in the fall reiterated his arguments from the Mueller investigation, contending the allegations that Trump improperly pressured the Ukrainian government were a “hoax” carried out by the “deep state,” meaning anti-Trump factions within the government.
Called out for phone calls
He also became embroiled in impeachment personally when House Democrats published phone records showing that Nunes communicated with allies of Trump who were pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations that would damage Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The records show Nunes had spoken with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and with Giuliani’s now-indicted associate Lev Parnas.
Democrats also published text messages, provided by Parnas, showing that a Nunes staff member, retired Army Col. Derek Harvey, had been setting up meetings with Parnas.
Ethics complaints have been filed against Nunes over those issues as well, but the Ethics Committee has not weighed in on the complaints yet. Trump did not mention Nunes’ involvement in Ukraine in his remarks Thursday.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Trump hails Devin Nunes as an impeachment hero, the ‘other side’s worst nightmare’."
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