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Nov. 18, 2020 - Epoch Times
36:57
EXCLUSIVE: Devin Nunes: The Man Behind the Explosive Memo | American Thought Leaders Special Edition
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Time Text
The White House has released this controversial Nunes memo.
The-led House Intelligence Committee releasing its now declassified memo.
He believes it's going to expose prejudice in the top...
There are a lot of concerns in there.
I'm told it will shock the conscience.
In February 2018, Congressman Devin Nunes created a firestorm with his four-page memorandum detailing how U.S. intelligence agencies had spied on members of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.
He really did uncover the biggest political scandal in American history.
It was very, very difficult to do, knowing the corruption that had occurred.
But yet, millions of Americans have been poisoned.
There's no facts.
There's no media.
And so Devin said, I'm not talking to these people anymore.
Devin takes it to an extreme.
Always the truth.
Always.
Who is Devin Nunes?
How did he first get into politics?
And what motivates him to keep going despite all that's happened?
To find out, I decided to visit him on his home turf in the valley in California.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. - You're in the central, You're in the central southern San Joaquin Valley, which happens to be the most productive land in the world. which happens to be the most productive land in the All of us grew up here.
I did a lot of irrigating when I was a young boy.
This was always one of my favorite places to go because when we got hot out here, we'd intertube down this canal when it was full of water.
These systems were built all over California.
Right now there's no water in it.
What happens is the Sierra Nevada mountain range captures so much snow melt, and that water is captured behind these big dams.
You start capturing it in the wintertime, and then when it gets hot in the summer, the water begins to flow through these series of canals that were built all over the state.
But without this system, it doesn't work.
It would be a desert.
It would be a desert, that's right.
I wanted to know where Nunes' journey began.
How did someone from a modest Portuguese farming family end up playing such a pivotal role in US politics?
You know, it's my first time here.
I love California, but I haven't tended to go inland as much.
Well, now you're in the real part of California.
If you've been to San Francisco and Silicon Valley and Hollywood, that's the fake stuff that everybody sees.
This is where the real people are.
It used to be that nearly every acre here in California was used.
It was really when I started farming on my own and I had a big responsibility because we had taken some land that was about 30 miles south here.
It was my responsibility that we got enough water so that things wouldn't die.
And to watch all that hard work that I was doing and to watch these plants die It was quite a jarring experience.
It wasn't what I was expecting to find, but I realized the water situation in California was what first drew Nunes into politics.
Before I met him, I had only really known Nunes because of his bombshell Nunes memo and his work exposing the FBI's FISA abuse.
Meeting him in California, I learned that for decades he and his neighbors had been watching the water for their crops disappear.
And it wasn't because of drought, he says.
Back in 2015, he was featured in the film Dead Harvest.
A lethal combination of federal laws and environmental lawsuits has dramatically reduced valley water supplies, diverting billions of gallons to environmental causes like protecting fish, regardless of the social and economic cost.
While California's drought has added to the problem, the damage won't stop when rain returns.
The disaster that you see here today has been created because of government.
It's a man-made drought.
In 1992, you had the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
That took over a million acre feet of water away.
In 2009, you had the San Joaquin River Settlement Act.
That took another 250,000 acre feet away.
You take the endangered species lawsuits on top of that and you have well over a million acre feet.
That's why there's a shortage today.
It's not because of drought.
It's because of these three laws that were passed and are being abused.
Look at all the water that's been wasted over the last 20 years.
All over one fish that's not even being saved.
Near his farm, Nunez showed me one of the canals that make up the California irrigation system.
I realize that this time of year this canal wouldn't be running, but basically you're saying that it's the reduction of water through this exact canal system in California that's creating these water shortages.
There's no actual water shortage.
Like most people envision, that the riverbeds are completely dry.
That's not the case.
80% of the water that ends up in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, 80% of it gets dumped into the Pacific Ocean.
Today, if You let 75% of the water go to the ocean.
Every acre in this state could be farmed, and everybody could have a green lawn in the state of California.
To Nunes, it didn't make sense for the production of food and the well-being of his community to play second fiddle to environmental concerns, especially when the relevant science was contested.
It's all politics, power, and money.
At the end of the day, you can use whatever term you want, but it's about socialism, communism, totalitarianism, fascism.
All of those isms are about people that want to hold and control power.
And water in a desert is a way that you can control power.
So in the name of the earth and the environment, they're creating political pawns.
I always say that we were the guinea pigs for the radical left movement.
I had my first dealings with the government at that time.
That's kind of the first time I remember vividly saying, this is wrong.
And seeing that we were trying to do everything we could to get water as crops were drying up.
I can't remember how old I was.
I'm guessing I was 13 or 14 years old at the time.
So then I just became more and more involved in politics.
What we've done is we've taken this craziness that I grew up with here in this state, one party rule with an entire propaganda system, and it's been deployed all over the United States, and people are beginning to see what's happening.
Nunes was used to challenging abuses of power in California.
As a congressman, ensuring water for his constituents remains a top issue.
But in 2017, he uncovered government abuse of power with national ramifications in the form of the FBI's crossfire hurricane investigation, though he didn't know what he was looking at at the time.
Welcome everyone to the last gasp of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory.
To better understand Nunes' significance in uncovering this scandal, I spoke to Lee Smith, author of The Plot Against the President, which follows Nunes' investigation.
Congressman Nunes is a major historical figure at this point, right?
Because he really did uncover the biggest political scandal in American history.
The fact that federal law enforcement Use the document paid for by one political campaign to spy on the other campaign.
That's an enormous scandal.
The resources of the federal government were used to spy on a presidential campaign.
That's what the Nunes memo uncovered.
That right there is the kernel of any investigation going forth.
So that's why I say that if it weren't for eight people, led by Congressman Nunes, but the rest of the objective Medusa team, no one would know anything about this.
I wanted to know what was going through Nunez's mind as he made these discoveries.
Did he realize what he was actually getting himself into?
So, tell me about when you realized that the FISA process was being abused.
We learned about that in the spring of 2017 because that was when we learned that they had used the dossier as part of the verification for the FISA, even though most of it was blacked out.
We were able to figure that out.
And the hardest part, imagine sitting on that, you know, we wanted to make that public just a few months later.
But as we started to do the investigation, we began to get more and more and more and more evidence.
And so it ended up not coming out until late January, first part of February of 2018.
That was probably the hardest part was for just a few people on the Intelligence Committee, the Republicans, had to sit on that information for whatever that was, eight or nine, ten months.
It was very, very difficult to do, knowing the corruption that had occurred.
We were able to figure that out before the American public knew that the dirty cops had actually used that to spy on the Trump campaign.
So I think it helped us actually, in retrospect, to actually get a lot more information out.
Now, after that point, once we made that public, I think that's where it becomes really problematic because you had current FBI people and DOJ people covering up and not letting this information out and making up excuses for the bureaucracy, and they never should have.
They never should have.
They knew exactly what was going on.
They knew it was wrong to use that dossier in a FISA application.
And as I said from the very beginning, the worst part wasn't using the dossier.
What was worse than that was actually using dollars to go and spy on the Trump campaign before they even had a FISA. And when they were running informants into people like George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, that's even worse than using the dossier, in my opinion.
I want to take you back to this moment where you were discovering the unmaskings.
Presumably at that time you really had no idea of the extent of what was happening, but I would guess there's some moment where you Basically, it dawned on you that something really, really odd and disturbing was happening.
Can you tell me about that?
I would say that the real tipping point was when I was sitting with the Australian ambassador at a dinner that he had invited me to, and he blew up at me saying that we, the United States, just leaked the transcript of his prime minister talking to President Trump.
And I said, no.
I said, that can't be us.
And then I realized, whoa, that's us.
And then, of course, you had the Flynn transcript, the Mexican president transcript leak out of our president.
You know, talking to foreign leaders.
Which, you know, that should have sent...
Every FBI agent should have been sent out looking for who was leaking these transcripts.
But yet, they didn't do it.
You know why?
Because they were in on it.
While I was researching Nunes, I was surprised to discover that prior to 2016, he had had a relatively constructive working relationship with then-ranking member Adam Schiff and congressional Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
How could things have changed so drastically?
Traditionally, the saying has been that once we get to our nation's shores, that everything should be bipartisan.
And even if it's not, we at least want to put on a veneer that we're speaking with one voice when we leave the borders of our nation.
And that clearly stopped.
And it started to stop during the Iraq War when that got real politicized.
People forget about that time period.
There was a lot of vicious attacks on George W. Bush.
Look a lot like the attacks on President Trump now.
But when you fast forward, they learned a lot during that time when they started these super PACs that were developed to essentially, it wasn't about, you know, they just thought that John Kerry was going to beat George W. Bush.
And that was when I think things really went awry and they saw, hey, we can politicize intelligence.
To get what we want.
And then later I watched it because they politicized ISIS, CENTCOM, and totally politicized the intelligence there.
And that was totally misread.
Part of the reason why General Flynn was fired, because he told the Obama administration, look, you can't just leave here.
And don't forget, the Obama administration wanted to do a deal with Iran.
So, Obama administration started to politicize intelligence, but at least at the congressional level, we still managed to maintain, you know, we may argue behind closed doors, but at least we had that veneer when we went overseas.
We spoke with quasi-one voice.
But after Donald Trump was elected, that went completely, you know, was thrown overboard.
And it turned into, the Intelligence Committee has turned into the Impeachment Committee.
It's a joke.
It's an absolute joke.
More than just unfairly, this is third world stuff that happened here.
Being able to corrupt the intelligence agency so much that you can just build a fake news narrative and feed it into an intelligence agency, in this case the FBI and the Department of Justice, and effectively spy on the campaign and try to dirty them up with zero evidence.
They destroyed hundreds of people's lives.
A lot of people had to spend a lot of money.
There's so many people that were accused of being a Russian this or a Russian that with no evidence.
They got hauled before the Department of Justice, the FBI. In some cases, they were spied on.
They were brought to Congress.
Think about that.
Think about how many people's lives have been ruined.
I mean, everybody knows, I mean, General Flynn.
I mean, that's an obvious one.
But how about Carter Page or George Papadopoulos?
And to be spied on by their own government?
It's outrageous.
And people ought to be pissed off about it.
But they're not because they don't know the truth.
To dig deeper into Nunes' personality, I spoke with his first chief of staff, Johnny Amaral.
Also Nunes' childhood friend, Amaral had worked with him for over 13 years.
One of the guiding philosophies in the Nunes operation is you tell the truth always.
Sometimes we say, tell the truth, tell it hurts.
And the reason for that is...
There's two reasons.
Number one, it's the right thing to tell the truth.
Regardless if it's good news or bad news, it's the right thing.
Number two, you never have to worry about who you're talking to or what crowd you're in front of if you're always telling the truth.
And Devin takes it to an extreme.
Because some people say, I can't believe a politician would say that.
Well...
If it's the truth, isn't that what you want?
Always the truth.
Always.
Never, you know, never deviate.
This emphasis on the truth probably also explains Nunes' strong position against big tech censorship, or how tech giants curate the information we see.
In his new book, Countdown to Socialism, he describes a quote, disinformation funnel.
The key that's in my book that I want people to understand is real simple, and that is that these tech oligarchs, these huge tech companies, are being run by a bunch of left-wingers.
They're actually stopping the people around the globe from even seeing anything that I'm putting out.
And this is all a plan, right?
It wasn't enough just to control the propaganda arm in the mainstream media.
They also needed to create this funnel.
It's this disinformation funnel.
Nunes writes, America needs a free, diverse press.
We need the vital information and debate the media is supposed to provide in order to make decisions about our country.
Instead, we have the fake news complex feeding its products directly into our information ecosystem via the social media giants, especially Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
I realized it wasn't just Devin Nunes.
What he has been through mirrors the experiences of many.
We live in an age of filtered reality.
Screened out by the filter is a population of Americans who feel their voices have been muted by biased tech giant arbiters.
What's happening is when people pick up these phones, they're being funneled directly into their eyeballs and into their brains, exactly what the left wants them to see.
And so when we ask why is Donald Trump at 45% approval rating?
It's because 55% of American people are cut off of any information because their eyeballs are glued To these phones that are being controlled by the social media companies.
If you're a Republican and conservative, especially since Trump, you are being censored on a daily basis.
Millions of Americans have been poisoned.
And poisoned so much so, like we talked about, they're tearing down statues and rioting and burning churches.
and now we're talking about defunding the police.
When I was reading Countdown to Socialism, I was surprised how much of the book focused on critiquing media bias and big tech.
Given its title, I had assumed it would focus more on the dangers of socialist-leaning policy.
But after I reflected on it more, I understood.
In Nunes' mind, there would never have been a lurch toward more radical left policies if it weren't for the media and big tech.
We are on a countdown to socialism Throughout history, that's what they do, is they...
They control the intelligence agencies and they kill off the other party.
They corrupt the voting system so that they control the vote so that they make sure that they always win.
That's exactly what they're doing.
They lust for power so badly that they're willing to destroy entire institutions, whether it be the FBI, DOJ, or politicizing all the IC intelligence community elements.
It's really sad to watch that happen.
Living in a true free democracy, you cannot politicize law enforcement.
And they did it.
They did that.
All because they wanted power.
And you could say, was that Obama?
Probably.
Was it Clinton?
Probably also.
Really bad actors who have really now created an animal that they can't control.
All at a time when, for God's sakes, if you would have told me, we're pulling down statues of George Washington, of Frederick Douglass, of Abraham Lincoln.
You even had the genius mayor of Washington, D.C. say something about removing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.
And we're on a real precipice of, you know, now where you have the former Hillary Clinton who lost is now out telling Joe Biden, if he loses, don't concede the election.
I mean, that's where we come to.
This is serious, serious stuff.
Because of a lot of false reporting about him, Nunes and his family have been harassed, threatened, and followed.
Nunes first told me about it when I interviewed him in October of last year.
What has been the toll on your family and your friends and so forth?
It just sounded like a...
Well, I mean, look, the death threats go a little far, right?
You know, but we've managed to deal with that.
The capital lease are pretty good when those come about.
But look, that's kind of all of the swamp here has deteriorated into that, right?
It's just down to there's no facts, there's no media, right, for the most part.
I mean, you're one of the few people that I do interviews with, right?
I set out to learn more about how this incessant media scrutiny Nunes faced had affected him.
Any facilities or people you got to keep out.
So like if you're filming this way, that's probably fine.
And just try, you know, nothing, no identifiable markers.
When they first came out, they actually went, and I'm talking about the major TV networks, went to every single family in this region with the last name of Nunes.
They harassed anybody with the same last name.
I'd followed the news about Nunes closely since he first became a household name in 2017, but the denigration and ridicule he and his family experienced was far greater than I had imagined.
The last four years you've been painted as a kind of Russian agent or something of this nature.
I understand someone actually put up a large billboard near your home of you in a Russian uniform.
Yeah, well, they put it up all over.
They came into my congressional district with anonymous money.
Nobody knows where it came from.
And they put billboards up all over.
It's kind of laughable because nobody knew what the hell they were talking about because they wrote it like in Russian, that somehow I was a Russian agent and a Russian trader.
And the truth has never come out that, hey, it wasn't Trump and the Republicans that were colluding with Russians.
It was the Democrats who were colluding with Russians.
It's clear.
It's obvious.
There's, you know, from the Horowitz report to our report to what the Durham investigation is showing, it's clear what happened here.
Ironically, Congressman Nunes' record shows that he's a Russia hawk.
Back in March of 2016, Nunes appeared on CNN and criticized the U.S. for misjudging Vladimir Putin.
The biggest intelligence failure that we've had since 9-11 has been the inability to predict the leadership plans and intentions of the Putin regime in Russia.
Clearly, after the invasion of Crimea, that should have been a red line.
To learn more about what it was like working for Nunes during this contentious time, I spoke with his staff.
I've never done an on-camera interview.
I told you, ten years I've never been in front of a camera and so fast forward two and I'm in front of a camera.
Anthony worked as Nunes Chief of Staff for five years and he agreed to share how it all started.
I remember getting a call from Devin saying, I'm going to the White House to be chomp on some things.
And that's when everything changed.
And so what that meant, it went from business as usual to the center of the universe and all the media, all the media attention and the left's attention was on Devin and what these secrets were, right?
And so it was interesting because when there's a lack of information, I learned the press makes up information, right?
They start to guess and then the others start to report on the guesses and then it becomes, did that actually happen?
I don't even know.
You realize that what was being reported in those stories, That they were all connected and orchestrated.
So on the constituent service side back here in the district, the calls we started to get were weird.
We'd get several calls about random issues, whatever was on the news, but then they started being hateful.
And then there started to be a lot from out of the district and from all over the country.
What made you think it was these angry phone calls were orchestrated?
So I would say we started to recognize patterns, right?
It started to be a lot of the same things said, and eventually as enough time went by, you started to see the same numbers show up, or different numbers, same voice on the other side of it.
So when I was here in the district, I would say very rarely in Devin's career was there a protest on this bill, or they demanded a meeting for this bill.
And we obliged them because they were constituents, right?
You can hold signs and protest, that's your right.
But what we noticed was that these were people that looked like they were from out of the area, and then they started being the same regular people every week.
And so we started to wonder, how do these people protest this often?
They're probably getting paid.
It was about then having those protests and then getting the press to show up.
If it happens enough times, you start to realize the patterns and realize There's a concerted effort here.
It really kicked into high gear, I would say, summer of 17.
And then when the election year started, that's really when it got bad.
Because then there was now funding for the re-elect of some guy to try to get rid of Devon.
Take a look at the top paper in his home district now calling him, quote, Trump's stooge.
Or this billboard in his community.
Pretty graphic there.
You've been a good boy, Devin, suggesting he is under Trump and Putin's control.
That billboard paid for by this man, Andrew Jantz's campaign.
He is a Democrat running against Nunes.
He's a Democrat.
Congressman Devin Nunes has been under fire.
A firestorm of criticism about how he handled classified materials.
Controversy and questions.
Even some members of his own party now wondering if he can truly lead an independent investigation into Russian meddling.
And so it was to the tune at the end that I think $11 million was spent against Devin on what's normally a sleepy campaign where we would work hard, put up signs, knock on doors, do the normal thing.
And out of nowhere, some B-level, C-level Hollywood actors show up as Putin and put on a skit in front of our office.
It's really far out weird things that we weren't used to in the district, right?
We've never seen that before.
You begin to see these patterns.
You know, when they run a story, and then that story turns into 24 stories, and the next thing you know, they're harassing your family.
And what did my, you know, grandmother, who's almost 101, what did she do to deserve that?
You know, have people go and knock on her door.
What did all my family...
They didn't deserve any of this.
Considering the attacks, it became apparent how loyal Congressman Nunes' staff are to him.
Most started as interns and then worked in his office for many years, instead of frequently changing offices, which is more typical on the Hill.
Devin breeds a loyalty in people that he surrounds himself with.
Honestly, it's probably because he's loyal to them and I know Devin would do anything for me.
When Congressman Nunes first ran for office, he asked his childhood friend Johnny to lead the campaign.
And after he was elected, he brought Johnny with him to D.C. to be his chief of staff.
Turns out this is relatively uncommon.
Usually new congressional members hire D.C. insiders into key positions, people knowledgeable in the ins and outs of political life in Washington.
This is an interesting story about the management structure that Johnny and Devin had in place throughout the career.
So they always said, in critical positions, if you're thinking of moving on, good for you and we're happy for you, let us know before.
Don't give us two weeks' notice.
We'll even help put a good word in for you.
And so when I left after being Devin's chief, Devin and I discussed it a year before I left.
While I was in California, Congressman Nunes invited me to a dinner at his home with his family and senior staff.
Unlike many politicians I've come to know, his public and private selves turned out to be quite similar.
When I asked people in his orbit about his character, everyone agreed on one thing.
He's a stubborn one.
Here's the big thing about him.
Everyone likes to win, right?
Almost everyone likes to win, right?
The amount of people who like to fight or who don't mind fighting to win, that's rare.
There are very few people like that.
Now, I'm not saying he likes to pick a fight.
He likes to go off and get in trouble because that's not true at all.
What I'm saying is if they come after him, he'll fight back.
And he likes it.
He just thinks that's part of the thing.
To get something important done, that's something you have to do.
Given everything he had been through, I was curious if Nunes ever regretted his choices.
Has anyone ever recommended that you stand down with what you're doing?
Well, I think the left, obviously, has wanted me to stand down.
But, you know, I have great support across the country.
And, you know, the few media companies that I do talk to, like you, I think that's, you know, I have a lot of respect for the few companies that are out there who are willing to stand up and do the right thing.
So at least there was a few people, a few institutions, journalists that were actually doing the work and knew that something had really gone awry here.
Did you ever think that this was just all too much?
No, no, because the more that they attacked, the more that I knew whatever they must have been doing must have been really bad because I had to be right over the target because the amount of money and time that they were spending on me didn't even match what I knew at the time.
I found it somewhat difficult to wrap my head around his dogged personality, so I actually asked him the same question again the next day.
How do you keep going in this environment?
Look, you don't really stop to, maybe someday I'll stop to think about it, but right now we're still in this fight.
So I appreciate your question, but I just can't answer it today because there's no time for self-reflection to sit back and say, well, should we have done something differently, should we have not have?
The criminals are fleeing from the scene.
They're trying to get away.
And it's up to me and our team on the House Intelligence Committee to continue to hold these guys accountable and make sure they pay the price so that we can get this country back on the right track.
Unlike many congressional members who move with their families to the greater D.C. area after they're elected, Nunes was always sure he wanted to keep his true home in Tulare County.
And according to his staff, almost every week he hops on another flight from Reagan National to Fresno Yosemite to be with his family.
You've met my wife and children.
They're a lot of fun.
They're at a fun age right now, despite what they've had to endure.
But that always keeps you grounded with that solid family structure, a lot like how I grew up in this area here.
Sierra Nevadas.
So there's a lot of the cities here in the valley, one of the things they've done is they have a lot of murals.
There's a couple cities that have a bunch of them, smaller cities.
I watched my first movie in that theater way back in the day.
So this is Jan.
He works with the...
All right.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Oh, good.
The U.S. news cycle has a very short memory, so it's remarkable to see where things have come over the past two and a half years vis-a-vis the Nunes memo.
We found, and as we outline here, are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate hand-picked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI.
That leaves an open question as to what the FBI or the Attorney General will find with these referrals.
There are significant serious failures here on the operation of the...
particularly in connection with the FISA's.
Whether it was sheer gross incompetence that led to this versus intentional misconduct and what the motivation...
or anything in between...
Since these reports have come out, like the Horowitz Report and others, it seems like what you wrote in what's called the Nunes Memo has turned out to be accurate.
Yeah.
Well, there was a lot of debate about that.
Actually, it was—well, we knew it was accurate.
There was only debate by the corrupt media who was in on it, okay?
You have to remember, the media was in on this dating back to all through 2016 because they were receiving the dossier.
So they were in on this from the beginning.
So, you know, when we put out—the only thing we did wrong in the Nunes memo is— We were just very clear and concise, and we should have put a hell of a lot more in there in retrospect.
But we just wanted to make sure that everything we had was dead-on accurate.
And so that's why we kept it so short.
In fact, we had taken some things out just because we didn't have two or three sources, which is what we wanted to have for everything that we said.
To seek recourse, Nunes has turned to the judiciary.
He has launched a series of defamation lawsuits against his detractors, so far with limited success.
I'm left with no other option but to hope that the judicial branch of government, that third branch, steps in and stops the madness.
Because, you know, what's happened to me has happened to many, many others, just not to the degree.
And so, you know, I thankfully have the ability to bring these cases and hope that these judges will begin to do the right thing.
You know, it's not okay to just make something up about your neighbor.
That's not okay.
Look, I can sit here and just type stuff in on social media and make stuff.
I got millions and millions of followers across all of my platforms.
So, should I just sit here and just, oh, I don't like this guy today.
You know, let me just talk about, maybe he's, I think he was with underage prostitutes, possibly.
I mean, should that be okay for me to say?
It's not okay.
And these courts know it, and these courts need to enforce the laws.
In the midst of uncovering this major scandal, Nunes has continued to fight to secure more water for the San Joaquin Valley.
This year, he says he's finally seen progress.
It's the first water we've actually gotten back in my lifetime.
And what really made this possible was President Trump getting elected.
He came out here a couple times, and he saw it for himself, and he didn't understand Why was that side of the road green and lush and the other side of the road dry?
I would probably say the most memorable moment working for Devin was getting to join him as Trump signed the California water memorandum that he did.
I've worked on California water for Devin since the very first bill that he introduced.
And so to see that come to fruition with the President of the United States weighing in on California water to our benefit, not to our detriment, but to our benefit, was a huge moment for me.
My whole entire life we've been giving away water.
We got a little bit of that clawed back.
And guess what happened the day after?
The Democrats in Sacramento, led by Governor Newsom, sued the Trump administration to stop this science from being implemented.
There's something about Nunes' tenacious, no-frills personality that separates him from other politicians.
The Nunes memo has taken its place in history as the official document exposing FISA abuse that allowed the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign in presidency.
And U.S. Attorney John Durham is continuing his investigation into the origins of this crossfire hurricane surveillance.
Devin Nunes' warnings about big tech now seem prescient, as Twitter and Facebook have taken unprecedented steps to censor politically sensitive materials published by the New York Post, one of America's oldest newspapers.
For a large swath of Americans, Nunes reflects their fears about the spread of communism in America.
And that's something that resonated with me as well.
As the son of Poles who fled communism in the 1970s, I've been surprised to see the shadows of that same ideology in America today.
We have to decide in this country, is it going to be okay to just, you know, yell in a crowded theater, fire when there's not a fire?
Is it okay to just accuse people of federal crimes, of being a traitor, and all the things that they've done to me and my family?
Is that going to be allowed in this country?
You know, I hope that we get to a point where the American people see that this lurch that we've made towards socialism and communism gets you to a very dark place.
And I hope that the message that I've brought being, you know, growing up here in California, watching this state turn into a socialist nightmare, that I'm kind of the canary in the coal mine that's spreading out this information to the American people that hopefully it won't be too late.
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