Rep. Devin Nunes, who continues to act like he himself will be going to prison if the investigation into Russian election tampering is not quickly tamped down by the Republican-controlled House, has been taking to the shows of the far-right to promote his theory that the FBI, the FISA courts, British ex-spies, the Democrats, and the suspicious puppy his neighbors just got are all in on a grand, orchestrated worldwide conspiracy to make Donald Trump look bad.
He went on Sean Hannity's show, where he and Hannity egged each other on with theories that it was really Hillary Clinton colluding with Russia because reasons. He's followed up now with a similarly scenery-chewing conversation with omnipresent conservative talking head Hugh Hewitt.
Hewitt, by the way, was last seen furiously parroting Nunes' claims that the FBI misled the court in seeking a warrant on totally not-at-all-Kremlin-connected Carter Page on the Washington Post opinion page. No, the piece has not been corrected to note that Nunes lied about his own central premise, and the FBI indeed did inform the court that part of their suspicions were based in part on information uncovered by filthy nasty Democrats. Hewitt and Nunes barely deigned mention it during this interview, either; Nunes' new schtick has been to claim that well it was only in a footnote so you can see how sneaky that was it's not like FISA judges read footnotes so actually this is every bit as big a scandal as I was originally shouting about and so forth.
No, Nunes if anything is even more worked up than he was a few days ago. Now he and Hugh Hewitt are brainstorming whether and how Devin could haul the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Himself to testify to his committee about the conspiracy theories scuttling through Devin Nunes' head.
HH: [...]You can’t compel him to come, obviously, but since he appoints the FISA judges, perhaps he would accept your invitation to a closed session. Would you welcome such an appearance by the Chief Justice before a closed session to discuss the FISA process?
DN: So this is something that we have, like I said, we have thought a lot about this. And the answer is we don’t know the correct way to proceed because of the separation of powers issue. So as you know, you know, we have, I’m not aware of, I’m aware of members of Congress going to the Supreme Court and having coffee with the judges, just to shoot the bull. I’m aware of, you know, dinners where congressmen have been with Supreme Court justices. But I’m not aware of any time where a judge has, for lack of a better term, testified before the Congress.
HH: It is perfectly appropriate to invite, though you cannot compel the Chief Justice. And since he appoints the FISA judges, I doubt any of them would appear without his previous appearance and his warrant to do so. But I would encourage you to do that, because I would like to see if the Chief Justice would inform you of their reactions. I believe they are not going to be amused by this footnote. I believe it’s a material omission.
Yep. It appears Devin Nunes is now actively considering how to best get Supreme Court Justice John Roberts before his committee to discuss how FISA courts work and whether or not the top courts in the land, when deciding on issuing warrants in cases that are absolutely certain to have grave implications of national security and become for-certain national political firestorms, bother to read footnotes.
That's where he's going next. Oh, this is going to be grand. Hearing House Speaker Paul Ryan wax on about the absolute need to drag the chief justice himself in to explain FISA laws to his assemblage of idiot congressmen who cannot figure out those things themselves even with hundreds of staff members and near-unlimited posterboard budgets at their disposal is going to be a must-watch event.