{"id":10275,"date":"2017-06-08T13:52:50","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T20:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10275"},"modified":"2017-06-10T05:41:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T12:41:35","slug":"mr-nunes-went-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mr-nunes-went-to-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Nunes Went to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Victor Davis Hanson
\nNational Review<\/em><\/p>\n

Devin Nunes is subpoenaing former Obama administration officials who may have played a role in inappropriate monitoring of the Trump transition team.<\/p>\n

Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), the now-controversial chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is a bit different from what Washington expects in its politicians.<\/p>\n

He grew up in the agricultural cornucopia of the Central Valley of California \u2014 fruits, vegetables, beef, dairy products, and fibers \u2014 the concrete expression of a myriad of hard-working ethnic groups. Their diverse ancestors fled poverty and occasional horrors in Armenia, Basque Country, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, the Punjab, Southeast Asia, and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Central to this mix of immigrants, farmers, and ranchers is a valley culture of pragmatism, bluntness, and tenacity.<\/p>\n

Of all these groups, none are more unabashedly patriotic and outspoken than Portuguese-immigrant dairy farmers, most from the islands of the Azores.<\/p>\n

I live in rural Fresno County at the juncture of three congressional districts. All three are currently represented by Portuguese-Americans from farming families and from both parties: Nunes (22nd district); my own representative, David Valadao (R., 21st district); and Representative Jim Costa (D., 16th district). All three keep getting re-elected for their accessibility, informality, and commitment to the traditional values of their districts.<\/p>\n

Nunes became a controversial public figure nationally when he revealed that the surveillance of foreign governments by American intelligence agencies may have resulted in the inappropriate monitoring of members of the Trump transition team \u2014 and perhaps some private citizens, too \u2014 and the unmasking of their identities.<\/p>\n

What followed this disclosure could have mirror-imaged the script of director Frank Capra\u2019s classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.<\/p>\n

It all started when Nunes said he had received unsolicited information of wrongdoing from one or more whistleblowers. Unfortunately for Nunes, he approached complaints of improper surveillance in a Central Valley sort of way (but a most un-Washington manner).<\/p>\n

Instead of the usual pattern of leaking the whistleblower\u2019s information to friendly media (and, of course, denying that he was the source of the leaks), Nunes went ballistic \u2014 and, heaven forbid, public. Nunes first notified House speaker Paul Ryan of his intention to bring the information to both the president and the public.<\/p>\n

Nunes then held a press conference to reveal the potentially inappropriate monitoring, then told the president himself that some of his associates may have been swept up in potentially improper surveillance and leaking conducted by bureaus that fall under the executive branch. Nunes also served subpoenas to the NSA, CIA, and FBI.<\/p>\n

The result? Suddenly, Nunes himself became the object of Washington vituperation for not immediately informing House Democrats about the potentially inappropriate monitoring.<\/p>\n

Nunes was targeted by progressive activists and investigated by the House Ethics Committee \u2014 which has thus far not released any findings of improper behavior \u2014 apparently because he went public and is now viewed as a partisan of Trump.<\/p>\n

Nunes next announced that he was temporarily delegating his leadership of the House Intelligence Committee as it investigated charges of collusion between the Trump administration and Russia. In melodramatic fashion, Nunes was said to have \u201crecused\u201d himself from all committee leadership. But he really did not.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecusal\u201d is a legal term that denotes disqualifying oneself due to conflict of interest. Instead, Nunes only took a temporary respite from leading a single investigatory thread of supposed Trump-Russian collusion. Was that a de facto dare for the committee to investigate what Nunes supposedly had blocked?<\/p>\n

The House Intelligence Committee has not interviewed a single witness for more than two months. Is that laxity because the committee so far has been unable to find concrete evidence of Trump-Russia collusion? While some other members of the near-dormant House Intelligence Committee apparently have continued to leak information about the possible prospect of grand-jury investigations of Trump and of forthcoming information about collusion with Russia, none of these stories has been accompanied by supporting evidence.<\/p>\n

Now, Nunes is back again, courting media outrage by pressing to subpoena three Obama administration officials \u2014 former national security adviser Susan Rice, U.N. ambassador Samantha Power, and former CIA director John Brennan \u2014 to explain whether they played a role in the improper monitoring of American citizens and the leaking of their names to the press.<\/p>\n

But strangely, this time around, the media has been relatively subdued. Perhaps it\u2019s because the Russian collusion story went nowhere when Nunes temporarily assigned his investigatory leadership to others.<\/p>\n

Yet it seems that the explosive unmasking charges are at last being seriously investigated.<\/p>\n

The mainstream media has caricatured Nunes\u2019s bulldog bluntness in going public as naive and partisan, and they have predicted his demise as a committee chairman amid a climate of hysteria.<\/p>\n

Instead, Nunes seems unconcerned and plows straight ahead \u2014 in the fashion of dairy farmers from the Central Valley of California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Devin Nunes is subpoenaing former Obama administration officials who may have played a role in inappropriate monitoring of the Trump transition team. Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), the now-controversial chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is a bit different from what Washington expects in its politicians. He grew up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1106,1092,92,16,31,187,46,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2FJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10048,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nunes-etc\/","url_meta":{"origin":10275,"position":0},"title":"Nunes etc.","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner: The one and only By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review When the feeding frenzy abates and moves on to the next target, among the flotsam and jetsam we may learn two things from the Nunes affair: One, intelligence-committee chairmen in the past have routinely gone over to various\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10037,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10037-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10275,"position":1},"title":"Nunes Affair","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The beleaguered Intelligence Committee chairman is the latest target in a partisan smear campaign. He must not step down. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) will not step down from the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Putin"","block_context":{"text":"Putin","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/putin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10072,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-multi-front-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":10275,"position":2},"title":"A Multi-Front War","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The House Intelligence Committee fights, the Susan Rice revelations, the stale Russian collusion story, the Gorsuch battle, the Bannon battles, the end of the filibuster, etc. are all different fronts of the same existential struggle: the unlikely Trump\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nunes"","block_context":{"text":"Nunes","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/nunes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-millstones-of-the-gods-grind-late-but-they-grind-fine\/","url_meta":{"origin":10275,"position":3},"title":"The Millstones of the Gods Grind Late, but They Grind Fine . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner: The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The latest disclosures that former Obama national-security adviser Susan Rice may have requested that intelligence agencies reveal or \u201cunmask\u201d those from the Trump team who were surveilled in purportedly normal intelligence gathering \u2014 and that such requests may\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11000,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/02-16-2018-angry-reader\/","url_meta":{"origin":10275,"position":4},"title":"02\/16\/2018 Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Sir, Your piece on political scandals is totally skewed of facts. The only so-called FISA-gate has been created by Trump's lacky Nunes. Your writing of lies and inaccuracies only fuels the clueless base of this president. I don't need to tell you what the real information\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11400,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/demonization-of-nunes-is-a-window-into-our-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":10275,"position":5},"title":"Demonization of Nunes Is a Window Into Our Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Much of what we now know about the unethical and often illegal behavior of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and Department of Justice emerged due to the efforts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Its chairman during its stunning disclosures has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "CIA"","block_context":{"text":"CIA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/cia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10275"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10279,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions\/10279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}