Devin Nunes, disgracing the Medal of Freedom by suing a cow and slavishly protecting Trump
Mooo. The GOP “farmer” in the hell, gets his participation trophy at the Battle of Bowling Green.
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
GW Bush: Nelson Mandela, Julia Child, Muhammad Ali
Obama: Harvey Milk, Toni Morrison, Gloria Steinem
Trump: Rush Limbaugh, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan
“Devin Nunes’ courageous actions helped thwart a plot to take down a sitting United States president.”
facts show that far from being a hero, as Trump portrays him, Nunes has actually harmed the nation by fueling the bitter partisan divide that has splintered America’s political system.
The list of reasons Nunes should not be given the medal could go on. Suffice to say, Nunes has proven to Trump that he is worthy of one award:
The Presidential Medal of Fealty.
The Fresno Bee says Nunes should not get high honor. | OPINION https://t.co/X2LAcweWty
— Fresno Bee (@FresnoBee) January 4, 2021
Nunes repeatedly claimed that Ukraine had attempted to influence the 2016 United States presidential election, one of the conspiracy theories related to the Trump–Ukraine scandal.[115][116]
In March 2017 the U.S. House intelligence committee, which Nunes chaired at the time, launched an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. On April 6, 2017, he temporarily stepped aside from leading that investigation while the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated allegations (which Nunes denied) that he had improperly disclosed classified information to the public.[3][4] In December 2017 the Republican-majority U.S. House Committee on Ethics closed its investigation without taking any action against Nunes.[5]
In February 2018, Nunes publicly released the Nunes memo, a four-page memorandum alleging an FBI conspiracy against Donald Trump. Nunes subsequently began an investigation of the FBI and the Justice Department for allegedly abusing their powers in an attempt to hurt Trump.[6][7]
In February 2017, Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, was the first leading House Republican to deny that the intelligence community had evidence of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.[84] He rejected repeated calls for an investigation by a select committee,[85][86] saying the House should not engage in a “witch hunt” and that “at this point, there’s nothing there”.[86] Nunes also rejected calls that he request President Trump’s tax returns.[84] At a White House communications aide’s request, Nunes spoke to a reporter for The Wall Street Journal to challenge a story about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.[87]
When Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned after it was revealed that he had allegedly misled Mike Pence about his communication with Russian officials, Nunes said he would not seek to investigate Flynn’s ties to Russia: “From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador—he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it.”[88]
[…]
Nunes has filed multiple lawsuits characterized as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (“SLAPP“). Experts have described the lawsuits as “unlikely to succeed” and “virtually free of merit”.[134][135]
On March 18, 2019, Nunes filed a defamation lawsuit against Twitter, Elizabeth “Liz” Mair, Mair Strategies LLC, and the Twitter accounts, “Devin Nunes’s Mom” (@DevinNunesMom) and “Devin Nunes’s Cow” (@DevinCow), seeking $250 million in damages.[136] As the story went viral, the popularity of the defendants’ accounts soared, gaining more followers than Nunes’s own account.[137] The San Francisco Chronicle cited this as an example of the Streisand Effect.[138] Kathryn Watson of CBS News said the filing was “particularly interesting” because in 2018 Nunes supported the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act”.[137] A filing to quash a subpoena argued that “no reasonable person would believe that Devin Nunes’s cow actually has a Twitter account” as cows “do not have the intelligence, language, or opposable digits needed to operate a Twitter account”.[139] On June 24, 2020, a judge ruled that Twitter was immune from Nunes’s suit because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.[140]
[…]
On December 31, 2019, Nunes, through his Charlottesville, Virginia attorney Steven S. Biss, issued a letter that threatened litigation against Representative Ted Lieu based on alleged damage to Nunes’s reputation.[156] Lieu responded, “I welcome any lawsuit from your client and look forward to taking discovery of Congressman Nunes. Or, you can take your letter and shove it.”[157][158]
Then came the Midnight Uber Ride of Devin Nunes. On the night of 21 March 2017—the day after the Comey hearing that confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into Trump/Russia, which is likely not a coincidence—Nunes and a staffer were driving when he got an alarming text message. He made the Uber driver stop, jumped out of the car, and hightailed it to the White House. Once there, Nunes reportedly met the attorneys Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Michael Ellis, two Trump loyalists of his acquaintence, who gave him some alarming information—something about “unmasking.” The next morning, after briefing Paul Ryan, Nunes held a bizarre press conference. “I have confirmed that additional names of Trump Transition Team members were unmasked,” Nunes told reporters, before leaving to pow-wow directly with the president. (Again: the Transition Team included a number of now-felons, including Mike Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about conversations he had that were secretly recorded).
On 23 March, at another strange press conference, Nunes said: “The president didn’t invite me over, I called down there and invited myself because I thought he needed to understand what I say and he needed to get that information,” which was a complete lie, as the White House had given him the information, and not the other way around. Nunes then canceled regular HPSCI meetings, and scrapped a much-anticipated hearing at which Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who had warned the Trump people about Mike Flynn, was set to testify.
There’s an understandable urge to move forward, indeed our own officials often counsel countries to avoid perceptions of retaliation. Seeking accountability for Trump & the corrupted is not this, it’s uncovering wrong doing to protect/ harden our democracy against future abuse. https://t.co/XXoxTqDK2O
— Alexander S. Vindman ❎ (@AVindman) January 4, 2021
https://t.co/PL1qV1c7EM pic.twitter.com/6B76JDOcJx
— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) January 5, 2021
