Republican Rep. Devin Nunes began his remarks during the House Intelligence Committee hearing with acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire by sarcastically congratulating his Democratic counterparts on “their information warfare operation” against President Trump.
Maguire appeared in front of the committee on Thursday morning to testify about the newly released whistleblower complaint that alleged Trump improperly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I want to congratulate the Democrats on the rollout of their latest information warfare operation against the president and their extraordinary ability to once again enlist the mainstream media in their campaign,” Nunes started. “This operation began with media reports from the prime instigators of the Russia collusion hoax. That a whistleblower is claiming President Trump made [a] nefarious promise to a foreign leader. The released transcript of that call has already debunked that central assertion, but that didn’t matter.”
“The Democrats simply moved the goalposts and began claiming that there doesn’t need to be a quid pro quo for this conversation to serve as the basis for impeaching the president. Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi went further when asked earlier if she would put brakes on impeachment if the transcript turned out to be benign,” he went on. “She responded, ‘So there you go, if the whistleblower operation doesn’t work out, the Democrats and — we have candidates — we have many candidates for impeachable offenses.'”
As more details were released about the whistleblower’s complaint earlier this week, Trump admitted to talking to Zelensky about Biden but has maintained that there was no quid pro quo situation involving the aid the U.S. provides to Ukraine.
Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry in response to the whistleblower’s report on Tuesday.
