Devin Nunes and his wine. Image: Website
Devin Nunes and his wine. Image: Website
Devin Nunes, now accused of financial mismanagement in a whistleblower complaint, was previously known for trying to "prove" Trump's false accusations of being wiretapped by Obama.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
Man ‘o man, here’s a blast from the past for a fall Friday! Devin Nunes, the former California Republican congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has been charged in a whistleblower complaint inside Donald Trump’s Truth Social media empire with “misuse of funds, hiring of foreign contractors and interfering with product development,” according to a report in ProPublica published yesterday. Nunes was named CEO of Truth Media back in 2021, in part, it was said at the time, because of his loyalty to Trump during the Russia investigation when Trump was in office…more about which later.
There has also been news of recent shakeups in Trump Media. Its Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Northwall, and Chief Product Officer, Sandro De Moraes, were “pushed out,” according to ProPublica. Both were required to sign non-disclosure agreements pledging not to reveal anything negative about the company in order to secure severance packages. Two more Truth Social employees, a human relations director and a product designer, were also fired in the shake up. Each was forced to sign an NDA if they wanted their severance packages, which they did.
But the whistleblower complaint that was sent to the board of directors of Trump Media is what’s making news. It is not known what the specifics of the complaint are outside of the general charges of misbehavior by Nunes, but the news of the complaint was yet another blow to the company, whose shares plummeted even lower than they already were when Trump’s “lock-up” period ended last month, allowing him to sell shares he owns for the first time since the company went public. Stock in the company, which hit $80 when it was first listed, were at about $16 a share on Friday.
Nunes was in the news in September when he flew on a private jet to North Macedonia to meet with the country’s new prime minister. Also along on the trip was Chris Pavlovski, the CEO of Rumble, a streaming services company which is said to be “close” to Trump Media. The Trump company even moved its offices in 2022 to be near Rumble in Sarasota, Florida, according to ProPublica. Rumble has a seven-figure deal with Donald Trump Jr., who sits on the board of Trump Media, for his streaming show “Triggered.” Also along on the trip to North Macedonia was Howard Lutnick, a major donor to the Trump campaign. Trump recently named Lutnick as co-chair of his transition team.
It is unknown what Nunes and the other Trump associates were doing in the tiny country of North Macedonia, which is smaller than the state of Vermont. It is known that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is pursuing real estate deals in Serbia and Albania, both of which border North Macedonia. It is also known that Richard Grenell has been working with Kushner on his real estate deals in the Balkans. Grenell served as Ambassador to Germany under Trump and was briefly appointed Acting Director of National Intelligence when Trump attempted to carry out a campaign of revenge on the intelligence community because of its cooperation with the Russia investigation.
Around and around goes the Trump-Russia merry-go-round: Grenell replaced yet another of Trump’s acting Directors of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, when he told members of the House Intelligence Committee that Russia was meddling in the 2020 election to help get Trump elected. Grenell immediately named Trump loyalist Kash Patel as “senior adviser.” Patel is a former Trump National Security Council staffer and was an aide to Nunes when he ran the House Intelligence Committee that was allegedly “investigating” the Trump campaign connections to Russia.
It was Nunes, you may recall, who ran the midnight snipe hunt in early 2017 after Trump had famously tweeted that President Obama had “wire tapped” him in his offices in Trump Tower just before the election in 2016. Trump was widely criticized for the tweet and was looking around wildly for something to back it up, when he found Nunes.
On the night of March 21, 2017, exactly a week after Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired for lying about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Nunes was going out to dinner with friends, riding in an Uber, when he got a phone call from the White House. Nunes called another Uber and told the driver to stop. He jumped out of one car and into the other, not telling his friends where he was going or why.
Where Nunes went was the White House, where two National Security Council aides, both of whom were close to Kash Patel, supplied Nunes with documents allegedly “proving” that Obama had “tapped” Trump’s “wires.” The next morning, Nunes called a press conference in the Capitol and announced that he was going to the White House to brief President Trump on secret information he had learned about the Obama White House wiretapping Trump.
At the White House, Nunes made a show of giving Trump the documents he himself been given the night before by White House officials. Then he held a second press conference on the White House driveway and lied about the roundelay he had just ginned up, when he had been given White House documents that he just turned around and gave right back to the White house, all of it done on orders from Trump.
The two people Nunes met with the previous night turned out to be pals of Kash Patel: One was Michael Ellis, a White House lawyer who was involved with intelligence issues. Ellis had also been a legal counsel to Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee. The other official was Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who served on the National Security Council as senior director for intelligence. Trump would appoint Cohen-Watnick as Assistant Secretary of Defense in late 2020 when he was cleaning house and fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper for disloyalty. Trump appointed Ellis general counsel of the National Security Agency at the same time. Ellis had been investigated by the Department of Defense for retaliating against Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Vindman for the role he played in exposing Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which Trump attempted to blackmail Ukraine’s president into opening a fake investigation of Joe Biden. Eugene Vindman is the twin brother of Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump at a House hearing during Trump’s first impeachment.
Funny how these players in the Russia investigation keep popping up, isn’t it? All these guys had to do was be loyal to Trump during Russia Russia Russia, and they’re on board for the duration. Grenell is being talked about as Secretary of State in a new Trump administration. Patel is—wait for it—being considered as a possible Attorney General or Secretary of Defense. He will naturally find jobs for his pals Cohen-Watnick and Ellis. And God only knows what Trump has in mind for snipe hunter Nunes.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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