Fox & Friends allowed Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to tell a huge falsehood about the now-infamous meeting between the Trump campaign and Russians at Trump Tower, then use that as a major part of his justification for having shut down the Russia investigation.
Nunes visited Fox & Friends this morning to discuss his ending the House Russia investigation abruptly and without having interviewed several important witnesses. Predictably, Donald Trump’s Fox Friends could not have cared less.
Nunes began by whining about being attacked by the meanie Democrats. Then he claimed he had warned the Obama administration n early 2016 about “this,” presumably meaning Russia’s interference, as some kind of proof that he’s not in Putin’s or Trump’s pocket.
Whatever happened in 2016, Nunes has been a Trump loyalist working tirelessly to undermine the Russia investigation since it began in 2017. But, of course, none of the three Fox cohosts mentioned that, including “hard-hitting questioner” Ainsley Earhardt who insists she does not want to be seen as "in the tank" for Trump.
Nunes went on to posture as someone who cares about national security as he suggested that examining the efforts of a hostile, foreign power to interfere in our democracy was just not worth his time. “We need to get our FBI and our intelligence agencies working on real problems,” he intoned with a straight face, “and get ‘em away from what they’re doing now, which is, looks like spinning in circles.”
“We spent 14 months on this investigation, looking for collusion, we didn’t find any,” Nunes said, quite disingenuously. Nobody on the Curvy Couch challenged a word.
“If you look at the one example of which was, I think, bad judgment which is where they met with a Russian lawyer, but it had to do with Russian adoptions,” Nunes added. But that meeting had everything to do with trying to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians. The “Russian adoption” excuse was a false cover story.
Think Progress explains:
Nunes was referring to a June 2016 Trump Tower between Trump’s top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised to give them dirt on Hillary Clinton. When the New York Times broke news of the meeting last summer, Donald Trump Jr. released a statement claiming they “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government.”
But within days, that statement — which we later learned was dictated by President Trump aboard Air Force One — was revealed to be a lie.
Trump Jr. eventually released the email correspondence that set up the meeting, and the word “adoption” does not appear a single time.
Instead, as Think Progress further noted, the emails reveal Trump Jr. was offered “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” Trump Jr. quickly wrote back, saying, “[I]f it’s what you say I love it.”
Those emails were released in July yet Nunes either did not know what they said or else lied about them.
Again, not one of the three Fox cohosts corrected the falsehood. Instead, they let Nunes claim there were “clear links between the Russians and the Hillary Clinton campaign which nobody seems to care about.”
What “not in the tank for Trump” Ainsley Earhardt did care about was pointing out that Nunes is not finished investigating Hillary Clinton, Obama administration unmasking and the so-called Steele dossier that the Republicans dubiously claim led to an improper FISA warrant against Carter Page.
There was just no end to Nunes’ victimhood, though. “The more that you look at this, the more it’s pretty obvious that you have one side that plays by one set of rules and then the Republicans are held to a different set of standards,” he said, without a trace of irony.
Watch Nunes get a pass as he shows himself to be either a liar or not in possession of the facts about a key incident in the Russia investigation below, from the March 13, 2018 Fox & Friends.
The House GOP never had any intention of investigating this situation. Their entire purpose was to steer the narrative in reverse so that the public would become confused as to who the real criminals were. (This is the same trick regularly used by the Right Wing when they want to short circuit a popular statewide initiative – when California had the Big Green proposition, the Right Wing immediately got another prop on the ballot that looked like Big Green but actually was designed to kill it if it passed.)
And Nunes is repeating the same nonsense the Right Wing has been spouting for months about the Fusion GPS opposition research on Trump. The Right Wing is frantically trying to convince everyone that the dossier was entirely funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC as some kind of evil plot with those rascally Russians. When in fact, the dossier was funded by multiple GOP opponents of Trump in the primaries, a situation that only changed late in the game when Trump clinched the nomination. At that point, after most of the work had been done and paid for, Fusion GPS offered their materials to the Dems, who agreed to pay for them to finish it and show them what they had.
The real investigation of the Trump campaign and criminality is being done by Mueller. We’ll just have to see if that investigation is allowed to get past the Kushner and Trump Jr indictments, or if the Pence White House closes it down at that point. The one thing we can be sure of is that Trump is quite serious about “Lock Her Up” when it comes to Hillary Clinton, and Fox News would be delighted to see that happen.
