There’s a Brutal New Campaign Ad Targeting Devin Nunes and His Memo

#ReleaseTheAttackAds

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) with Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on Capitol Hill in Washington in October 2017.Susan Walsh/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Update (2/2/2018): Citing a senior campaign aid, the Atlantic‘s Natasha Bertrand reported that Nunes’ Democratic opponent, Andrew Janz, raised more than $100,000 on Friday alone following the release of the memo.

Rep. Devin Nunes is getting a lot of criticism these days.

The California Republican, who chairs the House intelligence committee, released a controversial memo on Friday alleging that the FBI abused its surveillance powers as the bureau investigated the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. In the weeks leading up to the release, Trump’s Department of Justice warned that making the memo public would be “extraordinarily reckless.” The FBI, now under the leadership of Trump appointee Christopher Wray, said it had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Nunes’ hometown newspaper blasted his behavior in an editorial, referring to the congressman as “Trump’s stooge.” And Democrats on the intel. committee claimed the memo deliberately distorted classified information in an effort to discredit the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. (It took my colleague David Corn all of a few minutes Friday to find the first error in the memo.)

And now Andrew Janz, a prosecutor who is running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Nunes in November, is turning the memo into a campaign issue. On Thursday, Janz released a brutal new ad targeting Nunes’ involvement in the matter.

Nunes’ Central Valley district has, in recent decades, been a GOP stronghold. In the past three general elections, Nunes received between 62 percent and 72 percent of the vote. But with Nunes emerging as one of Trump’s most ardent defenders in Congress, Democrats are hoping to make inroads. A recent poll released by Janz’s campaign found that in a hypothetical matchup between Nunes and a “Democratic opponent,” Nunes received just 50 percent of the vote; the generic Democrat received 45 percent. Nunes “is in real danger here in #CA22,” Janz recently tweeted.

“If you had asked me six months ago if it was possible to get rid of him, I would have said, ‘No,'” says Tom Chamberlain of the Visalia Democratic Club in Nunes’ district. “But now—so much has happened. People are getting fired up. We’ve been getting calls from people up and down the state asking how they can defeat Devin Nunes. I’ve been here since 2012, and I’ve never seen that.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate