House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes says everyone has him wrong.
Despite handing over the reins of the House intelligence committee investigation on Russian meddling in the US election, Nunes never recused himself, he told CNN this week.
He also says he’s not pulling strings in that investigation.
Nunes won’t say who provided him the intelligence he reviewed at the White House that ultimately led to his sidelining in the Russia probe. But he did tell CNN it was definitely not Ezra Cohen-Watnick or Mike Ellis, the two White House national security staffers first identified by The New York Times.
Nunes has not been a part of any of the public or private hearings of the Russia investigation since April 6, but his staff continues working on the House Russia investigation. He personally signs off on the committee’s subpoenas and is leading his own investigation into “unmasking” — the revealing of names of US citizens heard during surveillance of foreign nationals — while Obama was in office.
“I can do whatever I want, I’m the chairman of the committee,” Nunes told CNN Monday. “Every decision I make is my own. I can go back right after this conversation and take the investigation over. Although I think everybody’s learning there’s not much there because there’s no collusion.”
It’s comments like that — even though Nunes stepped away from running the investigation months ago — that contribute to confusion over his role and influence has swirled around the Capitol.
That confusion led House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to harangue House Speaker Paul Ryan, repeatedly (the two leaders have exclusive power over who serves on the House Russia probe).
Nunes’ re-emergence in public comes as the House intelligence committee’s Russia investigation enters a critical stretch — interviewing a series of witnesses in private sessions this week, and planning for a busy summer in the Capitol.
The current leaders of the Russia probe, who picked up the reins after Nunes almost derailed the investigation, say the California Republican has kept his nose out of the probe.
“I don’t know where he’s at with it. But he has had absolutely no — he has not interfered in our investigation nor tried to affect it in any way whatsoever,” said Rep. Michael Conaway, the Texas Republican Nunes picked to replace him when he stepped aside. “We’ve got a great working relationship.”
Conaway said Nunes appears busy with his other responsibilities on the committee.
“With respect to the Russian issues, he’s left me totally alone and let me do it exactly how I’ve seen fit,” he added.
The questions about Nunes’ role have simmered in part because he never explained the boundaries of his removal until this week, and because he continues to be Trump’s closest ally with access to the Russia investigations.
“I temporarily stepped aside, just to make sure there was no issue at all, just to give everybody assurance there was no ethical issues at all,” he said. “That is not withdrawing, that is not recusing myself from an investigation.”
Nunes said he was still being “fully read in” on the investigation and, in response to concerns that committee staff were being torn between his investigation into “unmaskings” by the former Obama administration and the Russia probe, he explained that some Republican staff had been dedicated exclusively to the House Russia probe.
For the first time, Nunes also definitively denied that his White House sources of information were Cohen-Watnick or Ellis.
“None of that is true. It never was true,” Nunes told CNN, when asked if they were his sources. “Despite all the geniuses in the mainstream media who think they know the sources of my information, they still don’t know the sources of my information.”
Nunes also said he plans to collect the evidence gathered from his investigation into unmasking and turn it over to federal prosecutors to decide whether it’s worth prosecuting.
“What I plan to do is when we get all the information I need that I will take it to the appropriate authorities,” Nunes said. “There could be multiple appropriate authorities to take it to.”
Nunes also told CNN that intelligence agencies have been cooperating with him in his own probe of unmasking, but he declined to provide details.
For Nunes it has been a long, chaotic fall in the House since March. He started the spring helping mold and shape the very House investigation into questions of whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign.
What started in March with Nunes almost derailing the House probe itself, ended two weeks later with Nunes being sidelined as he became the subject of a House ethics probe into whether he publicly revealed classified information.
Nunes refused to discuss the status of the House ethics probe Wednesday and he said that the request from Democrats that he cede subpoena power in the Russia probe to Conaway was a “ridiculous question.”
At the same time, other congressional investigations grabbed the spotlight. Sen. Lindsey Graham secured the testimony of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates — and the national television coverage — after partisan fighting in the House delayed her hearing there.
And the Senate intelligence committee emerged as the premier congressional probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. In the stretch of one week, the Senate Russia investigators hosted Trump’s top intelligence officials, former FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a string of blockbusters.
Meanwhile, the onetime leader of the House investigation stayed largely quiet — until last week. Asked by a sympathetic caller to KMJ radio in California why he “recused” himself from the Russia probe, Nunes blasted the media for misrepresenting his decision. He blasted the news media and intelligence operatives he said could lead the country down a “slippery slope” to dictatorship.
“I think he is trying to reassert himself,” said Michael Bahar, the former Democratic staff director for the House Intelligence Committee until he left for the private sector a few weeks ago. “The parameters of his recusal are fully set by him and him alone.”
Bahar, who now runs the cybersecurity practice for Eversheds Sutherland in Washington, said that even through the chaos of Nunes’ White House trip, investigators kept working behind the scenes — poring over stacks of intelligence reports.
“The Intel investigation never really stopped, at a working level — it kept receiving documents, it kept making connections,” he said. “There was never a time we could even exhale because there was so much information coming in.”
Bahar, like other Democrats who worked on the House intelligence committee, have expressed confusion at Nunes’ hard split from them after two years of working closely together.
“Conaway doesn’t have his own staff, that’s a key fact. That’s why the parameters of the recusal being so fuzzy and evolving is adding a layer of strain,” Bahar said. “It also has to be: Who is the staff serving? Whose goals are they advancing? It puts a lot of the strain on them, it’s nothing nefarious at all: They’re serving two different masters.”
Asked Monday if he regretted dropping the reins of the investigation, Nunes said, “I don’t complain about anything, because this is a tough business.”
Nunes’ supporters said the decision ultimately rests with Nunes and Ryan. Rep. Trey Gowdy, who is running the House investigation with Conaway and Rep. Tom Rooney, declined to say whether Nunes should have stepped aside.
“That is a select committee to be picked by the speaker of the House and whatever conversations he had with Devin, I was not there for (that) and I’m going to let Devin and Paul handle that,” Gowdy said.
Meanwhile, Nunes’ friends empathize with the predicament he put himself three months ago.
One Republican lawmaker who’s friends with Nunes said he “still has faith” in him, but said after Nunes took the secret trip to the White House, there was almost no choice other than stepping aside.
“He walked into a minefield, and there was no way he could walk out,” he said.
