Rep. Jackie Speier said Tuesday said she doesn’t trust House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, and that he needs to step down from his role leading the committee’s investigation of Russia.
“I don’t trust him,” she said. “I think he’s a very nice man. I think he is, frankly, over his head. I think he has very poor judgment.”
Speier, D-Calif., and other Democrats on the committee think Nunes has compromised the committee’s independence and has ruined its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Democrats are livid because they still have not been able to view information that Nunes briefed Trump about before speaking to any of them.
“The writing’s on the wall,” she said. “This may make for a good spy novel, it doesn’t make for a good investigation.”
CNN reported Nunes has canceled all intelligence committee hearings this week as the controversy grows around his decision last week to brief President Trump on information he received showing Trump and his associates may have been “unmasked” by the Obama administration after being picked up through “incidental” surveillance. Normally, the identity of Americans picked up by surveillance this way would be protected, but in this case, the identities of several Trump transition team members were released.
Nunes confirmed Monday he had gone to the White House grounds in order to view information the day before he held a press conference explaining to reporters that he had found out about the unmasking of Trump officials.
Nunes at first said no one at the White House knew he was coming, but later said he didn’t sneak around and said “hello” to a few people when he arrived. However, he did not see the president or visit the West Wing.
His stated reason for going to the White House is he needed a secure facility to view the information, but Speier said the House Intelligence Committee has its own similar secure facility to view sensitive information.
“There are computers in the SCIF that we could have looked at the same documentation,” she said. “They clearly don’t want us to know who was the leak, it was clearly someone in the administration no doubt about it.”
Nunes has denied that the White House fed him the information. Democrats have speculated the administration leaked information to Nunes in order to provide political cover for Trump’s claim that President Obama ordered him to be spied on during the election.
