Devin Nunes Was Right About FISA Abuse
The California Republican was the first to sound the alarm over the FBI’s malfeasance.
Following the findings of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation, in which he uncovered signifiant instances of abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by members of the Justice Department and FBI, one man deserves the lion’s share of the credit for exposing the scandal: California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes. If it wasn’t for Nunes’s tenacious and unyielding resolve in the face of hostile mainstream media criticism, coupled with the constant resistance to and fallacious spinning of evidence from Democrats like Adam Schiff, Americans might have never learned of the widespread abuse of FISA.
As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland notes, “[Nunes] fought tooth and nail for access to the documents and information needed to provide the necessary congressional oversight. Still, with the limited information available, Nunes succeeded in exposing numerous problems with the Page FISA applications, later confirmed by Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 400-page tome.”
When Nunes first began exposing the FBI’s FISA abuse of Carter Page, Democrats led by Schiff called his memorandum a “conspiracy theory.” Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to former Speaker Paul Ryan demanding that Nunes be removed from chairing the Intelligence Committee. She slammed him as a “disgrace” who had turned the committee into a “charade” and claimed that he was leading a “coverup campaign … to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal.”
Nunes also proved disgraced former FBI Director James Comey wrong. At the time, Comey called Nunes’s memorandum a “dishonest and misleading memo,” ridiculously claiming that it “wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.” Yet when Comey was later asked about the IG’s findings, he lamely suggest that it only showed that members of the FBI made “honest” mistakes. So, who’s being dishonest?
However, despite being proven correct by the findings of the IG report, don’t expect to see any Democrats or the MSM offer Nunes any credit, or even a well-deserved apology.
