House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-CA) blasted Democrats in his opening statement Wednesday morning, pointing to their history of fabricating scandals as part of their desperate attempts to corner President Trump. “No conspiracy theory is too outlandish” for them, he said.
Nunes delivered his opening statement ahead of the testimony of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland as part of the fourth day of public impeachment hearings. The ranking member provided the American people with a brief flashback of Democrats’ efforts to oust Trump over the “now-debunked conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the elections” – an accusation that Democrats were sure would lead to the president’s impeachment. Nonetheless, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report did not deliver desired results to impeachment-hungry Democrats, ultimately concluding no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Denouncing the report as a whitewash and accusing Republicans of ‘subverting’ the investigation, the Democrats issued their own report focusing on their now-debunked conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to hack the elections,” Nunes said.
He continued:
Notably, the Democrats vowed to present a further “comprehensive report” after they finished their investigation into Trump’s treasonous collusion with Russia. For some completely inexplicable reason, after the implosion of their Russia hoax, the Democrats failed to issue that comprehensive report.
Nunes said the “episode” demonstrates how Democrats “have exploited the Intelligence Committee for political purposes for three years, culminating in these impeaching hearings.”
“In their mania to attack the President, no conspiracy theory is too outlandish for the Democrats,” he said, noting the number of times Democrats “floated the possibility of some far-fetched malfeasance by Trump, declared the dire need to investigate it, and then suddenly dropped the issue and moved on to their next asinine theory.”
His examples included their once-held belief that Trump is a Russian agent as well as Trump’s “diabolical plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.”
Nunes said the “ludicrous” accusations fail to reflect committee members who are “honestly searching for the truth.”
“They are the actions of partisan extremists who hijacked the Intelligence Committee, transformed it into an impeachment committee, abandoned its core oversight functions, and turned it into a beachhead for ousting an elected president from office,” he said.
“You have to keep that history in mind as you consider the Democrats’ latest catalog of supposed Trump outrages,” Nunes added.