Rep. Devin Nunes tore into the press during his opening statement on day three of the House impeachment hearings.
The California Republican purported that there was a difference between last week’s public testimony and how it was covered in the media.
“If you watched the impeachment hearings last week, you may have noticed a disconnect between what you actually saw and the mainstream media accounts describing it,” Nunes said Tuesday. “You saw three diplomats who disliked President Trump’s Ukraine policy discussing secondhand and thirdhand conversations about their objections with the Trump policy.”
“But what you read in the press were accounts of shocking, damning, and explosive testimony that fully supports the Democrats’ accusations,” he added.
Nunes went on to say that coverage of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election was “biased” and referred to the investigation as “the Russia hoax.”
“The media lost the confidence of millions of Americans, and because they refuse to acknowledge how badly they botched the story, they’ve learned no lessons and simply expect Americans will believe them as they try to stoke yet another partisan frenzy,” Nunes said.
Jennifer Williams, a foreign service aide detailed to Vice President Mike Pence’s office, and Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine specialist on the National Security Council, testified that they listened to the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
That call was the cause of the whistleblower complaint that triggered an impeachment investigation into Trump.
[Also read: Vindman chides Nunes: ‘It’s Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, please’]
