General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTPM: We Know Devin Nunes Probable Collaborator at the White House: Michael Ellis
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we-know-devin-nunes-probable-collaborator-at-the-white-house-michael-ellisYou dont need to look long to find the probable point of contact between Nunes and the White House. Michael Ellis is Senior Associate White House Counsel, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Council Legal Advisor. Hes an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve. Before he went to work at the White House Counsels office he served as Nunes General Counsel on the House intelligence committee.
Thats a pretty good clue to who Nunes might be in contact with at the White House. But we dont need to rely on that professional connection. Ellis and Nunes have already done something just like this at least once before. Youll remember that in early 2017, Mike Flynn directed his protege Ezra Cohen-Watnick to start reviewing what counter-intelligence investigators were finding in the Russia probe. Flynn was one of the primary targets of that probe. So this was highly irregular and not at all legit. That review continued after Flynn was fired. Cohen-Watnick eventually took his findings to the Counsels office, where Don McGahn was told to stop immediately. Rather than doing so he went around the Counsels office by having Nunes come to the White House in the middle of the night to share their findings. He and a colleague in the Counsels office called Nunes late one night and asked him to come to the White House immediately.
This was the origin of the unmasking conspiracy theory. H.R. McMaster tried to fire Cohen-Watnick when he arrived at the White House. But Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner asked President Trump to prevent McMaster from doing so. Cohen-Watnick was finally fired in August. So who was that colleague in the Counsels Office he worked with on his review and his work with Nunes? Michael Ellis. Nunes bizarrely referred to Cohen-Watnick and Ellis as whistleblowers and refused to divulge their identities. But they were finally identified in press reports.
In other words, Ellis already did close to the exact same thing with his former boss Nunes. Its a pattern of conduct, if you will. In that earlier instance, Nunes was a conduit for bogus findings meant to discredit the Russia probe findings Don McGahn was able to recognize as potential obstruction and quickly shut down. They took it Nunes. It seems quite likely that something like this happened in this case too.
-snip-
SWBTATTReg
(22,176 posts)balance guy to the idiotic president of the US. Period.
marble falls
(57,394 posts)Gothmog
(145,699 posts)SonofDonald
(2,050 posts)When you get to the last? Paragraph and see the inclusion of papadapadork being tied directly to the beginning of the investigation instead of the dossier they were trying so hard to blame it on it becomes obvious.
Nobody on the team who wrote the memo had clue one what they were saying, this tells me how completely the stupidity runs in these people, they couldn't out and out lie on paper and decided to do so right out in public when the memos contents were discussed.
The tweet from the groper this morning about how Adam Schiff must be stopped and the hair on fire desperation on faux noise tells you they are in absolute panic mode.
I love it, every damn moment of it, except for what may happen next of course but it's so damn exhilarating to see the deplorables finally having a meltdown.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Such a move forfeits Congressional Immunity.