Behind the bush leaks

For those unaware of the skulduggery going on between the White House and Representative Devin Nunes, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, here’s a brief resumé: Nunes, a Trump supporter and chairman of the committee currently investigating alleged/suspected links between the Trump campaign team and Moscow during the election period, held a press conference, without informing any of his fellow committee members, to announce to reporters that there was nothing in the claims of links between Trump and co and Russians. He’d looked into it, seen a bit of stuff stamped classified and was happy to tell the world that Trump was cleared. So that’s it, then. Except, of course, the committee investigation has only just started, so the other members of the committee, especially the Democrats, were not at all happy. Unsurprisingly. There have been calls for Nunes to recuse himself – a commonly used word in Washington these days - from heading the investigation on the grounds that it appeared he had already made up his mind that Trump was innocent OK! Some even suggested he step down from the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee. THEN, it turned out that he had been to the White House, well actually to the grounds of the White House and had met up with some unidentified individual who passed him classified documents – secret intelligence – which apparently revealed that there was zero evidence that Trump and the KGB – sorry, nice-looking Russian gentlemen – had been in cahoots over screwing Hillary Clinton’s attempts to become the 45th president of the United States. Well, to say the least, this stinks! Sounds like a put-up job if ever there was one, a nice little secret document, probably signed off by Trump himself which says there ain’t no evidence, period. Nunes rushes off to hold his press conference, like a good Trumpite, and everyone falls for it! Oh no they don’t. Sean Spicer, the wonderfully articulate Press Secretary, is hounded with questions about who Nunes met, what were the documents, was it an official leak, who let Nunes into the White House, who knew Nunes was coming, where exactly did he and the “official” meet and did Trump know? Indeed, did Spicer know, and if he did know what exactly did he know? Spicer came back with some classic responses, taking us all back to the Alice in Wonderland White House I blogged about some weeks ago. Here are some of the best replies from the press conference he gave yesterday. SPICER: So, obviously, all of what I know has been available through public comments. I know that Chairman Nunes confirmed that he was on White House grounds Tuesday. And, frankly, any questions regarding who he met with or why he was here should be referred to him. I've seen some of the comments that he's made to your outlet in particular about who he met with. And I would refer you to his comments that he's made. I'm not going to get into who he met with or why he met with them. I think that's something that he had made very clear, and I'll let him answer it. He is the one who has discussed what he is reviewing. And so I will leave it up to him and not try to get in the middle of that. Asked about the “leak”, he replied: SPICER: I think there's a difference between a leak and someone pursuing a review of a situation that they have determined. There's a difference between a leak -- someone leaking out to reporters for nefarious -- to take classified information and share it with people who aren’t cleared. Chairman Nunes is cleared; he's the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Someone who is cleared to shared classified information with somebody else cleared is not a leak. One section of the Q and A Q Just to be clear, just to kind of follow up on what everyone has been asking about Chairman Nunes -- so the White House does not -- does the White House have knowledge of the information that Chairman Nunes received when he came to the White House the first time? And if that's the case, or if that's not the case, is your position that the White House is not going to look into where he got the information from or who gave him the information until his investigation is complete? SPICER: I think that -- I'm not aware of where he got it from. I know in his public statements he’s talked about having multiple sources. And so I don't know how he derived the conclusion that he did. And I think that at this point, the goal would be to wait until the review that he is undertaking is completed. Q Why would Nunes need to brief the President on documents he viewed on White House grounds? SPICER: Because that's a big assumption that you're making that that's the only thing. As I said just a second ago, he had multiple sources on multiple topics. We don't know what he briefed him on in its totality. And so to jump to that conclusion is, frankly, irresponsible. So to sum it all up, here’s the likely scenario in the grounds of the White House during the meeting between Nunes and ??? Official: Hi Devin, nice to see you. Nunes: Hi Bob (or Jack or Chuck or Sally or Susan) Official: Er, I’m a source, you understand, in fact I’m multiple sources, ok? Nunes: Er, fine, I understand. Official:I’m not a White House official. Nunes: Of course not. Official: We’re meeting here behind this bush because I happened to be here today to see, well, I just happened to be here and thought it was convenient… Nunes: Quite. Official: So I have in my hand a few bits of paper which I thought you might find interesting for your committee’s investigation. Sums it all up really. Nunes: Excellent, just what I need. Official: But remember, I’m multiple sources. Nunes: Yes, of course. Official: You can do with it what you want, but we know nothing about it. OK? Nunes: Like usual then? Official: Yes, like usual. See you for lunch soon, Devin. Nunes: Sure Bob (or Jack or Chuck or Sally or Susan).