April 6, 2017

Devin Nunes to Step Aside From Russian Probe

The House intelligence committee chairman will be replaced by three Republican congressmen.

Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters/ZUMA

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House intelligence committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced Thursday he will temporarily remove himself from the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The announcement comes amid mounting questions over his ability to fairly handle the ongoing probe. Last month, he held a press conference to announce that he’d seen intelligence reports suggesting that members of Donald Trump’s transition team had been “incidentally” swept up in the course of foreign intelligence collection. He then rushed to the White House to brief the president before sharing the information he had learned with his colleagues on the committee. It later turned out that the information he had seen had been provided to him by White House officials and that he had viewed this intelligence on White House grounds—revelations that raised questions of whether he was taking part in a Trump administration effort to distract from the widening Russia controversy.

In a statement this morning, Nunes said:

Several leftwing activist groups have filed accusations against me with the Office of Congressional Ethics,” Nunes said in a statement. “The charges are entirely false and politically motivated, and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens and other abuses of power.

Despite the baselessness of the charges, I believe it is in the best interests of the House Intelligence Committee and the Congress for me to have Representative Mike Conaway, with assistance from Representatives Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney, temporarily take charge of the Committee’s Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee looks into this matter.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, praised Nunes for the decision, calling it a “fresh opportunity to move forward in the unified and nonpartisan way that an investigation of this seriousness demands.”

Shortly after Nunes’ announcement, the House Ethics Committee released a statement saying it has launched an investigation into allegations Nunes improperly handled classified information.

This is a breaking news post. We will update when more information becomes available.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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