The Scope Of The Trump-Nunes Strategy Is Coming Into View

Last week, I noted that although he's kept a low profile ever since, Devin Nunes resigned from Congress, where he'd been on the House Intelligence Committee, in late 2021, and Trump, out of office, hired him to be CEO of Trump Media & Technology in January, 2022. After the 2024 election, Trump named him Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. In that post, I speculated that Trump never intended Nunes just to run Truth Social; he was there in effect to run a shadow intelligence operation and plan for that side of Trump's return to office.

In the video above, Nunes finally steps out from behind the curtain and in an interview with Maria Bartiromo, speaks in his voice as Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Below are excerpts from the interview, starting at about 2:00:

The President has asked myself and all the people he's put into these law enforcemeent roles, he just wants it cleaned up. . . . He just wants to clean up the FBI, the Department of Justice, and part of that is having accountability for the people who perpetuated this ongoing hoax. . . . It's kind of important to remember that if one of the presidential candidates is cooking up a scheme, and working with Russians to cook up this scheme, and what you found out now from the report we put out this week is also that the Russians knew about the scheme. So the only people that didn't know about the scheme were Trump and the Republicans. . . and now we're digging this up years later. . . . Probably the biggest thing that still needs to be put out to the American people is this: why was there a raid at Mar-a-Lago? What led to that raid? . . . What the hell were they doing at Mar-a-Lago? What were they looking for?

There are a few takeaways here. First, he's referring to "the report we put out this week" and "we're digging this up years later". I think "we" refers to himself and Director Gabbard, which reinforces my impression that the two are working closely, and Nunes is bringing in his experience with the hoax between 2016 and 2021 when he was on the House Intelligence Committee. Second, he's in effect treating the whole set of activities on the CIA-FBI side as "the scheme", which from a legal standpoint means a single overarching conspiracy, which may at least suggest this is also how the Justice Department is looking at things.

Third, he's connecting the Mar-a-Lago raid to this overall "scheme". This is important from the statute of limitations issue. If specific actions in furtherance of the scheme took place more than five years ago, but they were part of an ongoing conspiracy, they can still be prosecuted. It looks as though at least the White House and the DNI are working under this assumption.

A second interview late last week between Sean Spicer and John Solomon of Just the News responds to the same release by Director Gabbard of a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report that Nunes mentions in his Bartiromo interview linked above.

At about 19:00, Spicer asks Solomon, based on what was contained in Gabbard's criminal referral to the DOJ last week, what he thinks should happen. Solomon replies,

We have proven a political conspiracy occurred, to mislead the American public and hamper Donald Trump. The question now is does it rise to a criminal conspiracy. . . That's for a grand jury to decide. Now, there's a problem. It's nine years later, and many of these crimes are way outside the statute of limitations. So let me tell you what has happened that I think is the most significant event and then how the Justice Department would normally handle this. . . . Let me walk you through it. In April of this year, Kash Patel, who by the way is one of the authors on the House Intelligence [Committee report]. . . He opened what we call a grand conspiracy case. . . . It takes a look at everything from the clearing of Hillary Clinton on July 5, 2016, when James Comey had just gotten new evidence suggesting she shouldn't be cleared, he waves his magic wand and clears her -- that moment, that day, through the Russia collusion investigation, through the Ukraine impeachment, through ignoring the Chinese intervention in the 2020 election, to Jack Smith raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of President Trump, and then bringing charges in Florida, as one ongoing conspiracy, the federal gvernment repeatedly misusing its intelligence and law enforcement powers to help the Democrats and to falsely harm Republicans, often with bogus allegations, as one conspiracy.

When you do that, you get the advantage of what a RICO case against the mob or a drug cartel does. It allows you to go back and charge events outside the statute of limitations and say clearing Hillary Clinton and starting Russia collusion is connected to raiding Mar-a-Lago and indicting President Trump for classified documents. . . . Now, a second problem for people who know how the system really works also goes away. If you bring this case in Washington DC with a 92% Democratic jury pool, you're not getting a conviction. . . . But in this case, you can start with the most current acts, the acts that occurred in Florida . . . and then go back and charge the earlier there. That gives the more neutral jury pool in Florida. . . and gives the potential hope. Now, if that's how this is going to go, Kash Patel has already lit the fuse, the next step that the Justice Department traditionally does when it investigates a racketeering conspiracy . . . you create a federal strike force. . . . My reporting indicates that decision could be made as early as next week.

In fact, this past Wednesday,

Today, the Department of Justice announced the formation of a Strike Force to assess the evidence publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard’s disclosures.

This Department takes alleged weaponization of the intelligence community with the utmost seriousness.

Upon the formation of the Strike Force, Attorney General Pamela Bondi stated:

“The Department of Justice is proud to work with my friend Director Gabbard and we are grateful for her partnership in delivering accountability for the American people. We will investigate these troubling disclosures fully and leave no stone unturned to deliver justice.”

This all confirms my surmise that Trump and Nunes had been putting a strategy together since 2022 -- indeed, even before the Mar-a-Lago raid -- to thwart the overall conspiracy. It's intriguing that Kash Patel, the current FBI Director, had previously worked with Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee, and it's easy to suspect he knows where the bodies are buried at the FBI. The overall strategy would be to prosecute a conspiracy dating back to clearing Hillary and extending forward to the Mar-a-Lago raid, with Patel running interference at the FBI. It looks like both Comey and Wray would be major figures. And it looks like this is only the start of the excitement.