The days of Devin Nunes secretly skulking around the White House, trying to turn his position on the House Intelligence Committee into a means of undermining the Russia investigation are over. Because Donald Trump has now explicitly told Attorney General William Barr that he can share classified information directly with Nunes, including information that directly affects open investigations. It’s just one part of a war of asymmetric information that Trump and Barr are conducting against Congress by hiding information critical of Trump, while supporting conspiracy theories. And truth be damned.
In a Fox News interview on Thursday, Trump reached new depths of ignominy. He called the investigation into the connections between his campaign and Russia “treason.” And, lifting a term that certainly deserves to be directed his way, Trump said of the investigation, “This was high crimes.”
And, said Trump, he had authorized Barr to release classified information to “whoever he wants, whether it’s his people, or frankly people like Devin Nunes, who is a star.” Trump then complained about the “amount of suffering” that Nunes had been through and how “they tried to drive him right out of politics.” By this, Trump appears to mean that someone had the audacity to run against Nunes in an election.
In the Wednesday hearing with former special counsel Robert Mueller, Devin Nunes’ questions were most notable for hitting exactly those areas that Mueller had been told not to speak about. Nunes asked over and over again about information collected by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and he asked again and again about the origins of the investigation in a FISA warrant issued concerning Trump adviser Carter Page. Mueller had been told not to answer questions in those areas in a note authorized by Barr because both are topics in an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice inspector general.
Throughout the Mueller hearing, Nunes didn’t just repeatedly ask the same question, even though he knew it would bring no response, but he also used his time to push Q-level conspiracy theories that there was “collusion between Russia and the Democratic Party.” Apparently the purpose of the scheme was to help Trump get elected. And meanwhile, Clinton hired a guy, who hired a guy, who hired a guy, who hired a guy who used to work for John McCain, who hired a guy who talked to some Russians. But all this was just a preview.
Considering what already seems to be an existing slant in some of the inspector general findings, such as the one that ended the career of former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, there is good reason to fear that the IG report will make claims about the origin of the investigation that feed into Republican “deep state” conspiracy theories. But it seems that Trump and Barr are taking no chances. They’re selectively feeding classified information to “whoever they want” to use in undermining not just the investigation, but the whole basis of the Justice Department.
Barr threw a blanket over the entire Mueller report on claims that the underlying information for the report included information that should not be made public. But Trump and Barr are now deliberately leaking exactly that sort of information directly to people in positions to damage the pursuit of truth. That includes information and testimony from active investigations.
This sort of asymmetric information is formidable in any situation. But in this case, Trump and Barr also control the mechanisms supposedly designed to address inequities. They are deliberately ignoring congressional subpoenas, refusing to produce documents, ordering witnesses not to testify, and failing to obey plain law. At the same time, they are running a continuing campaign of insinuation, leaks, and outright lies. If Nunes claims tomorrow that he has classified information showing that Democrats conspired against Trump, how can that claim be countered?
If the IG report were to come back tomorrow charging everyone involved with conspiracy, or if Nunes were to declare that he had evidence that Democrats worked directly with Putin, or if Trump were to declare that the Democratic Party was executing the plans of the Elders of Zion … it is unclear that there is anything, anything at all, that can be done to counter those claims.