On Monday evening, Donald Trump published another tweet complaining about “Leakin’ James Comey,” the FBI director he fired. But according to Comey’s successor Andrew McCabe, there was a genuine leaker who concerned everyone at the Justice Department—someone he was sure related everything going on in the Russia investigation back to the White House as soon as it happened. But that person wasn’t in the DOJ or FBI: He was in Congress. Part of McCabe’s job as as acting FBI director was to brief the “Gang of Eight,” the group that included congressional leadership and the heads of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate. Among that group was then-House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes. When Nunes learned something, McCabe regarded it as a “less than zero” chance the information would be handed to Trump.
But there’s something even more interesting in McCabe’s briefings to the Gang of Eight than Nunes hurrying off to get a fresh head pat from Trump. As McCabe told NBC News' Savannah Guthrie in a Tuesday interview, he briefed the congressional delegation not just on the status of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, but on the investigation he had opened into looking at Trump as a Russian operative.
Congressional Republicans—including Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes, Richard Burr, and Paul Ryan—knew that a counterintelligence operation had been opened to determine whether or not Donald Trump was an agent of the Russian government working against the interests of the United States. And none of them objected.
As shocked—shocked!—a Republicans are now pretending to be about the considerations that were going on inside the Justice Department, he truth is they knew as far back as early 2017 that the FBI suspected Trump of acting for a foreign power, and none of them tried to stop it. In fact, since Nunes was acting as an open conduit to the White House, it’s all but certain that Trump knew about the counterintelligence operation within days of it being launched.
This briefing apparently took place in the days immediately following James Comey’s firing and before the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. It may have been during the critical eight-day period that included Trump making angry calls to McCabe, an Oval Office meeting in which Trump shared classified information with Russian officials, Trump talking openly about his demand that federal officials take an oath of personal loyalty to him, and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein’s offer to wear a wire in meeting with Trump. Or it may have come somewhere after the appointment of Mueller.
Again, the Republican Party leadership was told that Trump was being investigated not just as a Russian conspirator, but as a Russian agent. They did not complain. But at least one of them may have panicked.
Throughout his time as head of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes showed a remarkable willingness to burn FBI sources and destroy valuable tradecraft. And the knowledge that he was sneaking news back to Trump from meetings with the FBI seems to fit with the way in which Nunes did astoundingly crazy things during this period.
Comey was fired on May 9, 2017. Mueller was appointed on May 17. But by that point Nunes had spent months going back and forth to the White House, both sending and receiving classified information. That includes the event in which hejumped from a Uber car when it paused at a street corner, sneaked around the White House grounds, and secretly slipped inside to meet with … exactly who is still unclear.
What’s not known for certain is if Nunes informed the White House that Trump was under suspicion as a Russian agent, or if he shared with them any evidence that McCabe provided during the Gang of Eight briefing. It is clear that during this period, Nunes paid multiple calls on Paul Ryan, discussed with him the subjects of the information on which he was briefing Trump.
Even as Andrew McCabe was opening an investigation into Trump and following the rules by reporting his actions to Congress, Devin Nunes was breaking the rules by carrying classified information in both directions to obstruct the investigation into Trump. It now seems that Nunes wasn’t just blocking that investigation in the House, but possibly obstructing the FBI by informing Trump of actions being taken in the DOJ.
The evidence against Nunes would seem to call for further investigation—an investigation that is aimed not at a ruling by the Ethics Committee, but a federal court.
CORRECTION—the author, that being me, significantly mangled the earlier draft of this article by conflating events in March and May. You might think that having just done a timeline of all these events, I could keep it straight. You would be wrong. Hopefully, it now makes more actual, and chronological, sense.