Speaker Paul Ryan gave Chairman Nunes no cover when he told "CBS This Morning" that he never told Nunes to brief the president on his secret intelligence, but did tell him to share it with the committee.
Co-host Nora O'Donnell did a good job of trying to pry the truth out of Paul Ryan and the Speaker's words did Rep. Nunes no favors.
In fact, if Ryan is telling the truth (And that's a big "if"), that's proof that Nunes has gone rogue and is working solely for the White House instead of the Intelligence Committee he chairs.
Speaker Ryan said that Rep. Nunes didn't even know the contents of the intel, only the nature of it and that "he was going to brief others."
Those others became one person, Trump.
O’Donnell asked, "Did you ask to see the documents yourself?”
“He didn’t have the documents, so I didn’t," Ryan said.
Does it make sense that Nunes went gangbusters on supposed information that he never saw?
After watching this interview, Speaker Ryan makes Chairman Nunes look more like a member of Trump's transition team than a high ranking member of Congress, tasked with overseeing important investigations.
None of Nunes' actions, according to Speaker Ryan's account, make any sense at all. Even if Nunes did get some hard-core information, he should have conducted himself accordingly, not act like an under-cover spy for Trump.
Paul Ryan has the authority to force Nunes from revealing the information to the appropriate parties. Ryan can pull him from his chairmanship if he refuses to disclose the information.
Another question is why is Speaker Ryan still supporting Nunes as chairman since he's abdicated his role?
The Speaker gave no information that would support Chairman Nunes' bizarre actions - at all.
Here's the rest of the transcript from CBS:
O'Donnell asked, "Did you encourage him to then go tell the president about it?”
“No, but I told him to just add it to his investigation,” Ryan said.
“So you at no time said, ‘Whatever you find out, you should probably go tell President Trump about it?’”
“Oh — he was gonna brief everybody. He — I already knew he was going to go and brief. So the — what Chairman Nunes said is he just came into possession of new information that he thought was valuable to this investigation, and that he was going to go and inform people about it,” Ryan said.
“But he hasn’t. I mean, he hasn’t even informed the Republican committee,” O’Donnell said.
“Yeah, I haven't seen the actual documents. I don’t know that he’s been in possession of them yet. Let me say this: It’s very important that we allow and encourage whistleblowers to talk to Congress,” Ryan said.
"Can you just help me understand that, though? Because if it’s a whistleblower, why wouldn’t that information then be shared with the Democrats on the committee, and even the other Republicans who haven’t seen it?” O’Donnell asked.
“I don’t know the answer to that question, you’d have to ask that person. I don’t even know who this is,” Ryan said.
“I mean, you’re a member of the Gang of Eight. You can see the most classified intelligence that our government has, right? You could request this information,” O’Donnell said.
“Yeah, we want this information to be provided to Congress and we’re waiting for it to be provided to Congress,” Ryan said.
But apparently one member of Congress has SEEN it: Devin Nunes. And he isn't working for you or his constituents, Mr. Speaker. He's either trying to protect himself from prosecution or protect Trump's people from further resignations and impeachment. Or both.
With Ryan now throwing Nunes under the bus it's only a matter of time until all is revealed. It's not the crime, it's the coverup.
