Six years ago, as the House of Representatives barreled into a government shutdown, California Rep. Devin Nunes called the quixotic band of insurgent Republicans who sparked the impasse “lemmings.” Out loud.
Nunes wasn’t any more supportive of Barack Obama’s healthcare law than other Republicans in Congress. He thought the Affordable Care Act was a disaster. But Nunes believed attempting to use the federal budget process to defund Obamacare, in a bid to kill it before implementation, was folly. The U.S. Senate was controlled by the Democratic Party, and Obama wasn’t about to help the GOP erase his signature achievement after working so hard, and investing so much, to win passage of the historic legislation. By the numbers, most Republicans understood this. But many, fearful of angering the Tea Party base or being scorned by conservative media, were unwilling to say so to the Capitol Hill press corps, on the record, as unequivocally as Nunes.
“Doing what they’re doing is not being a conservative,” Nunes told the Washington Examiner in October 2013. “Conservatives know how to count, and there has to be some game plan where you’re going to get to the end or you’re going to score … I just can’t tell my constituents that I’m shutting down the government for nothing.”
And so it has surprised some veteran Washington observers, especially those who worked along side Nunes on Capitol Hill, to see him become a reliable, outspoken defender of President Trump’s, let’s just say, eccentricities. It’s a starring role that has transformed a formerly obscure, though effective, legislator from California’s Central Valley into a conservative media darling and hero of the Republican grassroots. Indeed, the 46-year-old might command a larger small-dollar donor base than anyone in GOP politics, save for Trump.
Perhaps nobody would have paid attention if Nunes had joined so many other Republicans who made peace with, even justified, the president’s unorthodox domestic and foreign policies and unusual governing style. But he did not stop there.
Nunes jumped into the mosh pit to defend Trump against allegations that he colluded with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to defeat Hillary Clinton. Where some Republicans deferred to the federal investigation overseen by Robert Mueller, and others would only carefully express doubt, Nunes denounced it as a deep state hoax, taking messaging cues directly from the president. He used his position as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to run a counterinvestigation.
Meanwhile, the easygoing relationship Nunes enjoyed with mainstream reporters and conventional media outlets deteriorated to the point where this year, he filed multiple lawsuits against reporters and their employers alleging defamation. Nunes sued Twitter along the same lines, and so far, efforts by the social media platform to dismiss the case have been rejected by the courts.
To Nunes’ critics, and they are legion on the establishment Right and throughout the Left, the path he has walked in the Trump era has been baffling and disappointing. “I don’t know who he’s become,” said a Republican operative in Washington who was a House aide during the Obama years. But many other Republicans who have worked with Nunes over the years, and still do, say he’s the same guy.
He’s a team player who usually delivers the tough floor vote when leadership asks. And he’s a team player who has spread his fundraising largesse around to boost fellow Republicans in tough contests. “He was a dynamo, willing to do whatever was needed,” a former adviser to the National Republican Congressional Committee said. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, close with Nunes since both were involved in College Republicans, said his friend has always been willing to speak the truth.
“He’s been vindicated,” McCarthy told the Washington Examiner in an interview, confirming that Nunes would play a central role in the House Republican effort to defend Trump against the impeachment inquiry. “History will be very kind to Devin.”
With Washington mired in an impeachment inquiry, and especially because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to run the investigation through the Intelligence Committee, Nunes is in the spotlight. He has been as combative, and as pro-Trump, as ever.
Nunes insists the president did nothing wrong, or even untoward, asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate political rival Joe Biden, the former vice president. He is seeking the Democratic nomination and could face Trump on the ballot in 2020. Nor, added Nunes, is there anything wrong with Trump dispatching Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, to foreign capitals to dig up dirt on Biden, who happens to beat the president in hypothetical matchups.
Underlying impeachment is the summary transcript of a telephone call between Trump and Zelensky, revealed by a government whistleblower. U.S. military aid, pending at the time, was discussed, leading Democrats to charge that Trump was dangling a quid pro quo, which was aid for a Biden investigation.
But Nunes said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that Democrats are drumming up a “faux impeachment” over a “fake” scandal because the “phony” Russia investigation did not lead to Trump’s ouster. Offering a preview of his strategy for undermining impeachment, Nunes said the president wasn’t after Biden, but rather trying to uncover the origins of the Russia investigation. Since Giuliani served as Trump’s attorney during that investigation, Nunes has concluded that the former New York mayor’s overseas dealings are aboveboard.
“They fabricated what the president had actually said. So, they were meeting with the whistleblower, then they fabricated what the president said, then when the transcript came out, guess what, there was nothing in the transcript,” Nunes said. “It is absolutely the president’s right and the president’s attorney’s right to go and look to see, what is this, because why? Because the Democrats paid Ukrainians and asked Ukrainians for dirt on Trump.” (Democrats deny the charges.)
Nunes seems to have an instinct for the center of gravity in his party.
He was elected in 2002, four years before Republicans would lose control of the House, initiating leadership changes at the top. At the time, Roy Blunt, now a Missouri senator, was the more likely future Republican leader of the House. But Nunes decided, instead, to cast his lot with John Boehner. The Ohio Republican would eventually spend nearly a decade as the top House Republican, including five years as speaker. In part for his unwavering loyalty, Nunes was appointed chairman of the Intelligence Committee in 2015.
A Boehner lieutenant, Nunes also cultivated a relationship with Paul Ryan. In the early 2000s, the backbencher from Wisconsin was irritating GOP brass by running around Washington complaining that the party had lost its way and that the way back was a set of plans he developed to overhaul cherished, third-rail entitlement programs.
Ryan would rise to become the 2012 vice presidential nominee, chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee, Ways and Means, and speaker of the House, succeeding Boehner. But before most people had ever heard of him, Nunes was among the few Republicans who endorsed his politically charged proposals and dared join him on the dais for sparse news conferences to introduce his ideas that were only attended by wonky tax reporters and local Wisconsin media.
Nunes’ alliance with McCarthy is rooted in more practical beginnings. They both hail from California’s agricultural Highway 99 corridor, which is among the few red bastions left in the state. And they both are a product of former Congressman Bill Thomas’ old political machine. Nunes has shrewdly managed to bond with each of the past three top Republican leaders in the House long before they were ever anointed, not to mention an unlikely president of the United States.
“How many members of the House were basically in the inner circle of Boehner, Ryan, McCarthy, and Trump?” said Jeff Burton, a Republican strategist. “Which member has been on the inside with all of them?”
David M. Drucker is the senior political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
