WASHINGTON _ California Rep. Devin Nunes' opening statement Wednesday at the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment inquiry included opinions that he has frequently raised on Fox News, but that many Americans might have heard for the first time.
Nunes is the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump. The inquiry centers on allegations that Trump attempted to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into announcing an investigation into the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor at the hearing testified that he realized last summer that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had been directing a highly irregular diplomatic channel on how to handle military aid to Ukraine.
That channel placed a hold on promised military aid to Ukraine unless Zelenskiy made a public announcement regarding an investigation, Taylor testified. Taylor said he learned about the conditions from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union.
Nunes addressed none of those issues in his opening statement, instead focusing on what he felt was wrongdoing by Democrats.
The congressman echoed Trump's calls to reveal the identity of the whistleblower who reported concerns about the president, and Nunes attempted justify Trump's request that Ukraine investigate Biden's son, Hunter.
It's an argument familiar to people who read conservative news media and to Fox viewers, where Nunes is a frequent guest and a prominent face of the Republican Party.
Here's a rundown of Nunes' arguments at the hearing.
IT ALL GOES BACK TO FUSION GPS
Nunes has argued that Trump has an interest in investigating corruption in Ukraine because the country was actually a major source for the so-called Steele dossier, a file of political research for the 2016 presidential campaign that was commissioned by the firm Fusion GPS.
The dossier contained salacious allegations about Trump that were mostly uncorroborated. A law firm for then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at least partially paid for the document.
"What is the full extent of Ukraine's election meddling against the Trump campaign?" Nunes asked, accusing the Democrats of cooperating in that election meddling.
But there has been no public evidence that Ukraine participated in crafting the Steele dossier, and Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff of California have dismissed Nunes' claims as conspiracy theories.
Nunes in September filed a lawsuit against Fusion GPS, alleging the firm attempted to derail his own investigation into the Steele dossier. It's one of five lawsuits Nunes has filed this year against news media organizations and political adversaries.
The House Intelligence Committee has been interviewing witnesses at closed-door meetings for weeks, and Democrats have released full transcripts of several sessions.
Nunes criticized Democrats for redacting the name of Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American former Democratic National Committee contractor and staffer, from the transcripts of private witness interviews.
Nunes believes Chalupa worked in Ukraine to get opposition research on Trump and former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort on behalf of the Democratic National Committee.
Manafort in August 2018 was convicted of eight financial crimes primarily related to the millions of dollars he made as an adviser to a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine. In March, he was sentenced to 7 { years in prison.
WORKING WITH THE WHISTLEBLOWER
Nunes suggested that Democrats have a coordinated campaign with the whistleblower to do what they've wanted to do since 2016 _ throw Trump out of office.
"What is the full extent of the Democrats' prior coordination with the whistleblower, and who else did the whistleblower coordinate this effort with?" Nunes asked.
Nunes and other Republicans have campaigned for weeks to reveal the whistleblower's identity, even demanding that the whistleblower testify before the committee. Schiff has yet to weigh in on the request but has indicated his commitment to protecting the whistleblower's identity.
Nunes also charged that Schiff backtracked on comments about contacts with the whistleblower.
Schiff said in September that the Intelligence Committee had no direct contact with the whistleblower. His staff confirmed reports in October that the whistleblower had reached out to the office before filing the complaint that triggered the impeachment inquiry.
Schiff's office has denied that the Democrat's staff took part in helping craft the complaint, saying they merely directed the whistleblower to the appropriate channels.
Nunes further cited a 2017 statement made by the whistleblower's lawyer, Mark Zaid, that a "coup" against Trump was underway and that "impeachment will follow ultimately."
"In the time since that tweet was posted, which was referring to lawyers serving as the force of good to prevent this president from doing harm to our democracy, I've probably represented more Republicans, including White House officials, than Democrats," Zaid has said in a statement about those tweets. "This is nothing more than the continuing partisan deflection to desperately avoid discussing the substance of my client's whistleblower complaint."
The whistleblower is believed to be a CIA operative, and Nunes has been on a near-constant campaign since 2016 to paint the intelligence community as a team of bad actors working to undermine Trump.
WHAT'S A HOAX?
Nunes called the Ukraine investigation the "low-rent, Ukrainian sequel" to the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Nunes has also frequently called it the "Ukraine hoax."
Mueller's investigation did not result in criminal charges against Trump. It led to 34 criminal indictments, including against Manafort, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, as well as 12 Russian nationals who allegedly attempted to hack Democratic Party servers to influence the 2016 election.
Nunes and other Republicans have asserted since the investigation into Ukraine began that Democrats have been searching for any cause to impeach Trump, and that they switched to Ukraine after they realized Mueller's report had not concluded that Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia.
"On July 25, they turned on a dime, and now claim the real malfeasance is Republicans' dealings with Ukraine," Nunes said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had declined to organize a formal impeachment inquiry following Mueller, despite calls within the caucus, saying impeachment needed to be bipartisan.
After the details of the Ukraine call came out even moderate Democrats within the caucus started calling for impeachment in September, and she reversed course. Though a couple Republicans have voiced lukewarm support for an impeachment inquiry, none voted to approve the rules of it.
BACK TO BIDEN
Nunes argued that Democrats were preventing what really needed to be investigated: Why Hunter Biden was given a board position at the energy company Burisma Holdings and why he was paid $50,000 per month.
It's the same assertion Trump and his most loyal followers have commonly made, though the theory behind it has no supporting evidence.
At issue is whether Hunter Biden's position affected then-Vice President Biden's role with regard to Ukraine. Biden was pushing to oust the top prosecutor in Ukraine at the time, as were European diplomats and the International Monetary Fund, saying he was not doing enough to root out corruption. An investigation into Burisma had gone nowhere under the prosecutor. He was eventually ousted.
Trump and his supporters have implied, without evidence, that Biden was actually looking to protect Burisma by outing the prosecutor. Burisma was not under scrutiny when Biden was calling for the top prosecutor's firing.
Nunes requested that the committee also call Hunter Biden to testify. Schiff released a statement Saturday that suggested he would not grant Nunes' request.
"This inquiry is not, and will not serve, however, as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the president pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the president's effort to threaten, intimidate and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm," Schiff wrote.
