Thanks in large part to one man and his dogged pursuit of the truth, the Russian-collusion narrative that was seeded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and perpetuated by Barack Obama’s Justice Department was exposed for the hoax it was. If it wasn’t for Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) and his insistence on getting to the truth, Donald Trump’s presidency may not have survived the Democrats’ orchestrated efforts to see him removed from office. If it wasn’t for Nunes, Americans may have never learned the truth behind the infamous Christopher Steele dossier and the FBI’s abusive use of it to gain FISA surveillance warrants to spy on Carter Page.

On Monday, Trump awarded Nunes with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His “courageous actions helped thwart a plot to take down a sitting United States president,” said the White House. “Devin’s efforts led to the firing, demotion or resignation of over a dozen FBI and DOJ employees. He also forced the disclosure of documents that proved that a corrupt senior FBI official pursued a vindictive persecution of [former National Security Advisor] Gen. Michael Flynn — even after rank and file FBI agents found no evidence of wrongdoing.”

Despite opposition from Democrats, the mainstream media, and even some of his Republican colleagues, Nunes stuck to his guns and refused to back down from the truth. And one of Nunes’s biggest opponents was Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who repeatedly over the course of three years lied about the Russia hoax, falsely asserting that he had evidence proving the charge of collusion. The media chose to believe Schiff’s lies and parrot them over and against Nunes. And even after the Robert Mueller investigation found no evidence to support the charge of Russian collusion, Schiff continued to insist it was a fact while refusing to release transcripts from the House Intelligence Committee pertaining to its investigation of the collusion allegations after he assumed the committee chair in 2019.

Nunes’s investigation and findings were eventually vindicated. As the Washington Examiner noted, “DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report in December 2019 largely vindicated the Nunes memo, criticizing the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 ‘significant errors and omissions' related to the FISA warrants against Page, for concealing potentially exculpatory information from the FISA Court related to denials by a number of Trump associates, and for the bureau’s reliance on the Democratic-funded, discredited dossier by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.”

So, while Democrats and the Leftmedia still clinging to the debunked collusion hoax lamented Trump’s awarding of Nunes, Americans owe him a debt of gratitude for holding the line and not backing down from what he knew to be true.