Rep. Devin Nunes reacts to Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony in the Trump impeachment hearings, November 20, 2019

Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has been tied to the campaign of Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani for Ukraine’s investigations to tarnish Presidential candidate Joe Biden and to cover up Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US election.

The link was made by the attorney for Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s business associate who set up meetings with current and former Ukrainian officials. Joseph Bondy said former Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin — who had helped Giuliani launch the disinformation and pressure campaign in November 2018 — met Nunes a month later in Vienna, Austria.

Parnas and another Giuliani business associate in the campaign, Igor Fruman, were indicted last month on campaign finance charges, including payments to a Congressman to spread disinformation against US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Shokin was removed from his post by the Ukraine Parliament in March 2016 over his failure to pursue corruption investigations. From late 2018 through spring 2019, he met Giuliani’s team in Vienna and New York.

Bondy said that a top aide to Nunes, Derek Harvey, was part of a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to discuss the Trump-Giuliani campaign. The group, convened by Giuliani, included Parnas, Fruman, journalist John Solomon, and the husband-and-wife legal team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing.

Solomon circulated disinformation through his column on The Hill site, including the attacks on Yovanovitch, seen as a barrier to the effort for a statement of investigations. She was removed from her post by Trump in 2019, and insulted and “threatened” by Trump in his July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the catalyst for a formal complaint and then the impeachment hearings.

Congressional records show Nunes traveled to Europe from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 2018 with Harvey and two other adies. US Government funds covered the cost of more than $63,000.

The trip came as Nunes was trying to discredit the Mueller investigation with claims that it was launched by political bias and a plot to overthrow Donald Trump.

Parnas Testimony and an Ethics Investigation?

Bondy said Parnas and Nunes began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas was working to put Nunes in touch with the Ukrainians for political “dirt” on Biden and Democrats.

The lawyer said his client is willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony in the impeachment inquiry. He tweeted to House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff:

Democrat Rep. Adam Smith, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said of an ethics investigation of Nunes: “Quite likely, without question”.

I understand a lot of this is about Joe Biden but the bigger thing is about what President Trump and the Russians and all these people have been doing….[This] is a systematic problem that is a threat to the country because of what Russia is doing to democracy.

Rep. Jackie Speier, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added:

Nunes responded by threatening to sue the Daily Beast and CNN and insisting, through the hard-right attack site Breitbart, that the story is “demonstrably false”.

Appearing on Fox on Saturday, Giuliani said, “Devin Nunes says he didn’t meet with Shokin. I have no reason to believe that he did. If he did, there would’ve been nothing wrong with it.”

A Dedicated Trump Ally

Nunes has been prominent in this month’s public hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Trump. He has used his statements to push the disinformation and conspiracy theories at the heart of the Trump-Giuliani campaign, and has tried to tear down the 10 current and former US officials testifying before the House Intelligence Committee.

In March 2017 Nunes, then the committee chair, was caught taking “information” from White House officials to try and discredit the investigation of the Trump campaign’s links with Russia. He was forced to recuse himself from the chair, but dedicated himself to the promotion of distorted and false claims to hinder Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

See also An 8-Point Guide to Nunes Memo, Trump v. FBI, & Attempt to End Russia Inquiry
TrumpWatch, Day 77: Trump-Russia Inquiry — House Intelligence Chairman Nunes Steps Aside

On Thursday, the first wave of the Nunes-Parnas story — initially reported by The Daily Beast — surfaced in the impeachment hearings, through questioning by Rep. Eric Swalwell of former NSC official Fiona Hill.