California Republican Devin Nunes is continuing his quest to find some way to blame the FBI for Donald Trump’s Russia connections. CNN reports that time Nunes demanded the release of any known contact between FBI agents, sources, or informants and a long list of Trump associates. This follows a response on Monday in which Nunes was told that he already had the answers to show that the DOJ had not acted against Trump.
The new list of names—which includes Carter Page and Roger Stone along with many others—can be expected to produce “results” where results means, yes, the FBI was occasionally checking in on these guys because they were known to be shady. However, Nunes can then be expected to use any contact between Page, or Stone, or Sam Nunberg, or such luminaries as Walid Phares, and anyone who can so much as spell FBI in his continued claims that the FBI was out to get Trump.
After White House-coordinated attempts at creating a scandal around “unmasking” went down so badly that it forced Nunes to give up the first chair on the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russia, he returned to the fight with an insistence on the release of a memo that was certain to show that the FBI had leaned heavily on unreliable sources to influence the FISA court. It didn’t. Then he demanded the release of information around an FBI informant, declaring that it would demonstrate conclusive FBI bias against Trump. It didn’t. Then he joined the chorus of Republicans demanding the quick release of an inspector general report too in the hopes they would find some sign of pro-Clinton/anti-Trump actions within the DOJ. It didn’t.
If quantity has a quality all its own, for Devin Nunes that quality would be bull crap. In quantity.
But Nunes, who Trump has lauded as a “great American patriot,” is still riding hard for some trace evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the FBI. It’s the same play he’s made multiple times before, it’s just that Nunes is now spreading his already widely stretched idea of what constitutes FBI involvement to ludicrously thin extremes.
It may seem pointless, but it has two genuine purposes: First, it’s part of a broader scheme to keep hitting the DOJ and FBI with demands for more and more information and provide an excuse to attack Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the special counsel investigation. Second, and perhaps most importantly—it raises money for Devin Nunes.
The constant stream of demands have already required the FBI to reassign agents to do nothing but process the document requests from House Republicans, and Republicans have been stomping their feet loudly that the demands were still not being handled promptly enough. The noise about this issue was supposed to be a precursor to holding Rosenstein, who is in charge of the special counsel investigation into Russia, in contempt of Congress … except that Republicans mismanaged the paperwork. But they’re likely to try again. Because attacking Rosenstein both feeds the right-wing meme that the Deputy AG is somehow doing somehow skewed against the man who put him there, and keeps open the idea of replacing Rosenstein with someone who would neatly snuff the special counsel investigation.
The other purpose of Nunes’s constant stream of antics: Reward Devin Nunes. Because while Nunes’s chain of lies, conspiracy theories, false accusations, and general bug-eyed handwaving may seem amusing to everyone else, the praise it has drawn from Donald Trump has turned into huge dollars in Nunes’s campaign coffers. But even that money … is kind of funny.
On a raw numbers basis, Devin Nunes’s fundraising looks super-duper healthy. According to McClatchy, Nunes raised millions from big money donors and PACs in the DC area who love how he gets in there and fights, fights, fights for Trump even when it requires him to be actively foolish.
However, there’s a slight downside to his all-in-for-Trump routine …
Of the more than $1 million Nunes raised from individual donors, roughly $19,000, or 2 percent, came from people in his district, which includes chunks of Fresno and Tulare Counties. That's the smallest percentage of any the eight California Republicans in Congress who Democrats are targeting for defeat this fall.
Trump supporters love Nunes. But the people in his own district, who sort of wanted someone to represent their district and not spend 110 percent of his time wearing out his knees for Trump, are much less pleased. Two percent seems generous, considering that he’s given zero percent for them.
That’s why, despite a campaign war chest loaded down with dollars from Trump-loving PACs, Nunes’s House seat is no longer considered “safe Republican.” The latest Daily Kos Elections’ rating still has the race as likely-R, but that’s a long way from what might be expected considering that Nunes won reelection in 2016 by over 35 percent. And running against Devin Nunes is also the kind of thing that, not surprisingly, brings in considerable cash.