![Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Cali.) follows own unmasking theory / [Image by U.S. Congress via Wikimedia, Public Domain]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2017/9/12/660x290/b_502x220x82/rep-devin-nunes-r-cali-follows-own-unmasking-theory-image-by-us-congress-via-wikimedia-public-domain_1574859.jpg "Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Cali.) follows own unmasking theory / [Image by U.S. Congress via Wikimedia, Public Domain]")
Rachel Maddow's MSNBC segment about Facebook executives finally acknowledging that Russians paid for ads to spread fake news stories about Clinton, ended with an update about Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Cali.) who she said had "unrecused" himself from the Russia investigation. While Maddow is thorough in her reporting, she was unfortunately not thorough enough in this case. In fact, Nunes had never even really recused himself in the first place, despite the fact that he had been pressured to do so months ago.
Nunes never recused himself from Russia investigation
At the time, Rep. Nunes made headlines as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when he held a surprise press briefing outside of the White House one morning. In that briefing, he said that he had seen classified intelligence documents that incriminated the Obama administration about "unmasking" private citizens from Donald Trump's campaign. This followed the president's initial claim that that former President Obama had wiretapped phones at Trump Tower last year. Since then, the Justice Department confirmed that there was no evidence to back up that claim.
The House Intelligence Committee used their resources to get the Justice Department to find out if this was true, while Nunes violated committee protocol by not sharing the document with the rest of the committee members before holding his press briefing.
The committee only learned about the document during that last minute press briefing. Following this, ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Cali.) led the call along with other Democrats for Nunes to recuse himself from their investigation. When Rep. Nunes finally "did," in his statement, he only said that he was temporarily stepping away from the investigation.
Nunes chases his own conspiracy, threatened justice community
House Speaker Paul Ryan expressed disappointment at Nunes' statement and fought against the demands for his recusal. Nunes would then "return" to subpoena intelligence and justice officials on behalf of the committee for his own investigation on the unmasking of those names.
From his inquiry, he has locked his focus in on former national security advisor for the Obama administration, Susan Rice, and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) even admitted that Nunes' unmasking was created by the California representative.
On September 1, Nunes sent a letter to President Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions, demanding that he produce documents about a controversial Russia dossier and turn it over to the committee. Nunes threatened Sessions and the new FBI Director Christopher Wray to drag them before the committee to grill them publicly and hold them in contempt of Congress if they did not hand over those documents. The Russian dossier was discredited by Republicans and Trump supporters which had been turned over to the FBI last year claiming to have incriminating information on Trump and other members of his campaign.
Despite this, since the dossier was turned over to authorities, interest in it has continued to resurface from investigators ever since and has even been mentioned in hearings. As for the deadline to respond to Nunes, Rachel Maddow said on her program on Friday that both Sessions and the Deputy Director of the FBI called Nunes' bluff by letting the deadline for their response expire.
