Trump's pick for intel role draws scrutiny over Russian interference views

Devin Nunes, the former congressman and MAGA loyalist picked by Donald Trump to chair the Intelligence Advisory Board, has a long history of downplaying Russian interference in U.S. elections.

As recently as last February, Nunes testified in a deposition for a defamation lawsuit that a package he received from someone subsequently deemed by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Russian agent acting under the “purview” of President Vladimir Putin to influence U.S. elections was “just a continued operation of smearing people, trying to tie people to Russia.”

Nunes’ views largely reflect those of the president-elect, who praised him in announcing the appointment for “exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.” And as an outside advisor, he appears poised to rebuke intelligence assessments that clash with official MAGA doctrine.

Nunes has filed atleast10lawsuits, the vast majority against journalists and media organizations, since 2019, when he served as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Many of the defamation claims focus, directly or indirectly, on the former congressman’s handling of intelligence assessments on Russian meddling in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. They offer a glimpse into the kind of advice that he might be expected to provide to Trump in his second term.

Nunes emerged as a strong supporter during Trump’s first term. During the impeachment proceedings against Trump for soliciting foreign interference by Ukraine in the 2020 election, Nunes defended Trump while attacking the “the Democrats, the corrupt media and partisan bureaucrats.”

Trump seemed to show his gratitude to Nunes by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on Jan. 4, 2021, two days before Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Later that year, Nunes resigned from his seat representing a central California congressional district to take a job as CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social platform.

Nunes’ income more than tripled from his 2020 congressional salary of $220,048 to $750,000 as CEO of Trump Media, with an agreement to increase it to $1 million after two years, according to an order from a federal judge dismissing one of the suits.

Since Nunes joined Trump’s company, his affairs have only become more entangled with those of the president-elect he will soon advise. In 2023, Binnall Law Group — which represented Trump in his effort to avoid turning over records to the now-defunct House Select January 6th Committee — took over at least three of Nunes’ defamation cases.

The Binall Law Group also represents Richard Grenell, whom Trump has appointed to serve as presidential envoy for special missions, in a defamation suit against Olivia Troye, a former counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence.

In a motion to dismiss, Troye’s lawyer wrote that the lawsuit is “part of a MAGA campaign” by Grenell and the Binnall Law Group “to silence and punish those who criticize them and MAGA luminaries.”

It is unclear how the firm’s lawyers are being compensated for litigating on Nunes’ behalf, but federal election records show that two political action committees linked to the Trump campaign have shoveled more than $4 million to the firm over the past two years.

Save America PAC, described as a “leadership PAC” sponsored by the Trump campaign, has disbursed $1.5 million to the Binnall Law Group since January 2023, according to the Federal Election Commission. Over the same period, the Make America Great Again PAC, a qualified PAC that shares the same treasurer, spent $2.5 million with the Binnall Law Group. Federal election records show that Make America Great Again PAC is largely funded by Save America PAC.

Nunes could not be reached for comment for this story, despite multiple emails to Trump Media and the Trump transition team. Emails and calls to the Binnall Law Group also went unreturned.

In an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo last month, Nunes described his role on the Intelligence Advisory Board, which dates back to the Eisenhower administration, as spot-checking “problems in the intelligence community” to “give the president an independent view of things,” while making sure that “intelligence products” are “not politicized.”

A defamation lawsuit filed by Nunes against the Washington Post provides a window into the kinds of assessments by analysts working inside the federal government that are likely to once more antagonize Trump as he returns to the White House, and which Nunes will be positioned to challenge.

Reporting in the Post in the runup to the 2020 election described a briefing given to the House Intelligence Committee — then chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — by a senior intelligence official who told the lawmakers that Russia had “developed a preference” for Trump and wanted to see him re-elected. The newspaper reported that Trump was “furious” at Joseph Maguire, then the acting director of national intelligence, and took him out of consideration for the permanent position.

A panel of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court opinion dismissing the lawsuit against the Post, finding that “Nunes does not point to a single statement in the article that he claims is false, let alone defamatory, on its face.”

The order continues: “Notably, Nunes does not deny that he was the one who told President Trump about the intelligence briefing. He denies only that he falsely told President Trump that the briefing was given exclusively to Representative Schiff, which is something the article does not expressly attribute to Nunes.”

During his interview with Bartiromo, Nunes described a need to “depoliticize the intelligence agencies.” But it’s not clear whether Nunes and other MAGA allies’ concerns about the politicization of intelligence go in both directions or they only care about intelligence that casts Trump in a bad light.

Nunes and other Trump allies such as Kash Patel — named to lead the FBI — have claimed that the professional staff in the federal government — derisively labeled “the Deep State” — hold a bias against Trump. But now that they are set to take power, it appears that neither Trump nor his appointees have mentioned any interest in instituting safeguards against using the power of the federal government to target Democratic officials or other political opponents. Far from it: “Retribution” was a central theme of Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Nunes’ comments to Bartiromo suggest that his new role as chair of the Intelligence Advisory Board is likely to build on his history as a litigant seeking to vindicate himself and his boss, while taking aim at what he views as false reporting by the news media based on leaks from disloyal federal employees. As he described it to Bartiromo, Nunes views the mainstream media as being almost inextricably intertwined with the federal bureaucracy in a shared effort to discredit Trump and his allies.

“The fake news media and the left can cop conspiracies and then go and take information and intelligence — supposed intelligence that ends up being fake intelligence and open up fake investigations that then leak out to the American public where the American public thinks that something is happening that didn’t happen — like the Russia hoax,” Nunes said. “We need to get that — we need to stop that, end that, and I think I’ll be a good backstop for the president in that manner.

“If I see something that’s not right, we’ll investigate and we’ll report to the president and hopefully bring it to a quick end,” he promised.

But among 10 lawsuits reviewed by Raw Story that Nunes has filed since 2019, all but one has been dismissed. Appellate courts have upheld orders dismissing Nunes’ claims in two cases, while a third is currently under review. In no case so far has a court found in Nunes’ favor, although in one, a judge found that a Washington Post reporter “simply made a mistake when she wrote the sentence in question — and a mistake is not actual malice.”

That case is separate from the dismissed suit against the Post for reporting on the intelligence briefing about Russia’s preference for Trump in the 2020 election.

One of the remaining cases, a defamation suit against NBCUniversal concerning a segment produced by journalist Rachel Maddow, gets to the heart of Trump’s primary grievance against the FBI, the intelligence community and mainstream media: the effort to determine whether Trump colluded with Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

At the culmination of a nearly two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller declined to charge any Trump campaign official with conspiracy. His report to the Attorney General explained that the investigation “did not identify evidence that any U.S. person who coordinated or communicated” with Russian agents “knew he or she was speaking with Russian nationals” engaged in a criminal conspiracy. However, the report includes a 78-page section extensively detailing “Russian government links to and contacts with the Trump campaign.”

Like Trump, Nunes — who is positioned to serve as the president-elect’s top intelligence advisor — continues to downplay the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Testifying in a deposition in February 2024 for the NCUniversal suit, Nunes brushed aside a package delivered to him by a Russian agent named Andrii Derkach at the time he was serving as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee as a “phony package” and a “continuation” of “the crazy Russia hoax stuff.”

“This comes on the heels of all the other fake information so, you know, from my perspective at the time and still today, this was just a continued operation of smearing people, trying to tie people to Russia,” he said.

Nunes’ testimony in February 2024 suggests he believed that the Derkach package was part of a Democratic disinformation operation, as opposed to one run by Russian intelligence.

“But that’s my point to you is this is how disinformation ops are run,” Nunes said, according to a partial transcript filed in federal court by NBCUniversal. “And this is a known guy that would always run the — they will always run these. He would be one of the lead guys they would go to.”

A lawyer for NBCUniversal countered: “But this wouldn’t have supported your conclusion that the package you received from Mr. Derkach in December of 2019 was a disinformation op, would it?”

“Well, this proves that it’s a disinformation op because you have the Democrats using it to run a disinformation campaign,” Nunes replied.

The dispute has been winnowed to one remaining issue: Maddow’s statement that Nunes “refused” to hand over the package he received in December 2019 to the FBI. An FBI report uncovered during discovery confirmed that, in fact, a Republican House Intelligence Committee aide reported the package to a special agent in January 2020, and the special agent took possession of it.

It’s not clear what documents Derkach included in the package for Nunes, and the FBI report redacts an itemization of the contents. But a declassified intelligence assessment released in March 2021 by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines reported that the primary effort by Russian intelligence to influence the 2020 election revolved around a narrative “alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other U.S. officials and Ukraine.” The same intelligence assessment described Derkach as “a Ukrainian legislator who played a prominent role in Russia’s election influence activities” and someone under the “purview” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Nine months after the package was turned over to the FBI, the Trump Treasury Department officially designated Derkach as a Russian agent under Executive Order 13848, which Trump himself had signed in 2018.

“Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement included in the press release. “The United States will continue to use all tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaign and uphold the integrity of our election system.”

The 2020 presidential election was less than two months away at the time.

Top: Devin Nunes' testimony in February 2024 for a deposition concerning a package he received from Andrii Derkach; bottom; an intelligence assessment declassified by Director of National Intelligence Avil Haines in March 2021.Sources: Federal courts, U.S. government

Derkach was subsequently indicted in the Eastern District of New York for bank fraud and money laundering as part of a scheme to violate the sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department.

Despite documentation of Derkach’s efforts as a Russian agent to meddle in U.S. elections by officials spanning the Trump and Biden administrations, as recently as February 2024, Nunes testified that he didn’t know who Derkach was.

“I didn’t know who Derkach was then,” Nunes testified. “I still don’t know who it is now.”

Still, Nunes is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for defamation, the amount of which will be determined by a jury, as a result of Maddow stating in error that Nunes refused to turn over the Derkach package to the FBI.

Maddow wrote in a sworn declaration recently filed in federal court that at the time the segment aired, in March 2021, she believed the statement to be truthful and accurate. Among other “data points” confirming her belief, Maddow cited a Politico story in July 2020 reporting that the Derkach package was not turned over to the FBI. The article said that “Nunes declined repeated requests for comment.”

Maddow wrote in the declaration that her confidence in her on-air statement was also bolstered by “information showing that Mr. Nunes had prior connections to other foreign agents (like Derkach) who were spreading disinformation concerning Mr. Biden and Ukraine” — specifically an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani named Lev Parnas.

Maddow’s declaration references a statement Parnas made to her during a January 2020 interview when he described his interactions with one of Nunes’ aides, a man named Derek Harvey.

Maddow could not be reached for comment for this story.

Nunes and Harvey both sued CNN over a report that the two met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor named Viktor Shokin in Vienna in late 2018, before the Democrats took control of Congress and Nunes relinquished his position as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. The source for the CNN story was Parnas, whom Nunes and Harvey variously described as a “known liar,” “fraudster,” “conman” and “hustler.”

Although Nunes and Harvey denied that they were in Vienna at the time alleged by Parnas, the lawsuits helped resurface unsavory details about Harvey’s dealings with Parnas as part of an effort to dredge up information that would hurt Biden’s chances of winning the 2020 election.

In his complaint, Harvey cited WhatsApp messages between himself and Parnas between February 2019 and May 2019 that were made public by House Democrats on the Intelligence Committee following Trump’s impeachment for soliciting Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election.

In the messages, Parnas offered to set up Skype meetings with various Ukrainian prosecutors, including Shokin.

The messages show Harvey pressing Parnas for information that could be used to damage Biden’s candidacy.

“Can we get materials? Sources at [the] State [Department] say there was this push to spend US donor aid in Ukraine,” he wrote in one message sent in March 2019.“It appears the US foreign aid to Ukraine nearly doubled from FY 15 to FY 16 (around $280mm to over $500 million).

Harvey concluded the message by describing a scheme he hoped Parnas would be able to corroborate.

“Their hunch was that the $ would get grafted by [Ukrainian] officials, in exchange for $ then given to Clinton Foundation and other social justice causes,” he wrote.

In a deposition for the defamation case against NBCUniversal related to the Maddow segment, Harvey confirmed that he spoke with Shokin at one point. Asked whether he briefed Nunes about the conversation, Harvey testified: “I think I did. I said, ‘I don’t think it’s going anywhere.’”

District courts have dismissed both Nunes’ and Harvey’s lawsuits against CNN in decisions that were upheld by appellate courts.

A federal judge in New York threw out Nunes’ suit for failure to state a claim. In Harvey’s case, a judge in Maryland ruled that CNN's implication that Harvey attended a meeting in Vienna was “not materially false.” While the time and place of the actual meeting might have differed, the judge noted that Harvey himself incorporated a reference to the WhatsApp messages “regarding scheduling interviews with multiple former Ukrainian prosecutors, specifically including Shokin” in his complaint.

Aside from the lawsuit against NBCUniversal for the Maddow segment, only one other defamation case remains to be decided, and it’s among the oldest.

In April 2023, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against journalist Ryan Lizza for a 2018 story in Esquire that was titled “Devin Nunes’s Family Farm is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret.” The story dealt with the use of undocumented workers on a farm run by Nunes’ father and brother in Iowa. Nunes and family members filed an appeal the following month.

In late 2023, the Binnall Law Group took over the case when Steven Biss, Nunes’ original lawyer, withdrew due to a medical emergency. Jesse Binnall and a lawyer for the Hearst Corp. argued the case before the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis in September 2024. The appellate court has yet to issue a decision.

During his interview with Bartiromo last month, Nunes suggested that in his new role as chair of the Intelligence Advisory Board, he is unlikely to let up on the journalists and media companies he believes are mistreating him and Trump. He described a vision of social media platforms like the company he runs for Trump as replacing traditional media outlets as Americans’ primary source of information. The traditional media outlets should markedly scale back the scope and ambition of their journalism, he suggested.

“In a day where we have technology out there, like social media, like Truth Social and others, the information gets out there far and wide,” he said. “And what you need for these legacy media companies to do is to just report the facts. Let people speak for themselves. Interview someone. Let people see it. It’s very simple. The technology works easily. And don’t mince words, cut up people’s quotes just to promote a conspiracy theory or some fake news item that makes the media look so biased.”

Aside from whether Nunes’ judgment on matters involving Russian meddling in U.S. elections might be clouded, another question stands out: Is all this personal for him?

Maddow testified in her deposition in September that she found it noteworthy that Nunes gave up a powerful position in Congress to run Trump’s social media company.

“He made sort of a big splash out of it being … a free speech thing that he was doing because he was such a free speech guy, I found it to be ironic and hypocritical given… the thing that he’s most famous for, which is suing people who say things that annoy him,” Maddow said.

“It’s hard for me to square,” she added, “and it makes me feel like there’s something about him I don’t understand.”

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