On Lawfare, Jane Chong expresses her anger at the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Nunes of California:
Nunes’s aggressively pro-administration posture has included over recent weeks hitting out at the IC and downplaying the Russian threat. He suggested back in early January, for example, that partisan politics accounted for the IC’s conclusion that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-Elect Trump’s election.” When, during an interview, Chris Wallace quoted one of Trump’s tweets and pointed out the then-President-elect didn’t exactly sound “ready to crack down on the Kremlin,” Nunes defended Trump’s comments, arguing that “he wouldn’t be the first president to want to be buddies with Putin.”
All this marks a 180-degree turn for Nunes who, as recently as last spring, declared on CNN that “[t]he biggest intelligence failure that we have had since 9/11 has been the inability to predict the leadership plans and intentions of the Putin regime in Russia.” Under the Obama administration, Nunes called out the IC, the White House, Congress and U.S. allies for being suckered into negotiating with Russia and “misjudg[ing] Putin for many, many years.”
And it’s turns like the one Jane describes which are quite baffling to any reasonable person. I can’t help but hope this will eventually be another stake in the coffin of team politics and mindless straight ticket voting, because that’s what I see as the necessary predecessor to the current national debacle taking place not only in the White House, but in the House of Representatives as well.
Jane’s conclusions?
Even now, in fact, key Republicans specifically entrusted with oversight matters are attempting to turn the page on harms that by no means necessarily end with Flynn’s resignation. For example, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah)—who, like Nunes, was an aggressive proponent of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and has been startlingly silent on ethical issues under Trump—declared yesterday that he has no intention of further probing Flynn ties to Russia. “It’s taken care of itself at this point,” he said, just before the Times broke its story. Note how much less careful this comment was than that offered by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who stated, in response to questions about whether further congressional investigation is necessary, “I’m not going to prejudge the circumstances surrounding this, I think the administration will explain the circumstances that led to this.”
At some point, the House of Representatives and its House Intelligence Committee chairman are going to need to face the oversight music, however reluctant they are to do their part to orchestrate it.
Unfortunately for those constituents unhappy with his performance, he appears to be in a safe Republican district:
Nunes’ district was renumbered California’s 22nd congressional district after the 2010 Census. With redistricting, Nunes lost most of eastern Tulare County to the neighboring 23rd District. The 22nd also has an Hispanic plurality (44.8%). Based on recent election totals, it remains predominately Republican. In the 2012 and 2014 elections, Nunes won 61.88% and 70.58% respectively against Democratic opposition.[16]
No 2016 update yet to Wikipedia. However, if a significant number of his fellow Party members were removed from power in the next election, it might serve as a lesson to him.
