The Washington Examiner reported this week that the House Intelligence Committee has yet to have all of its members named by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Two months have passed since the start of the new Congress, and so far, only Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) have been named to the House Intelligence panel, Nunes says. Given Democrats’ majority in the lower chamber, Schiff was named the head of the committee and Nunes as its Republican ranking member.
“It’s rather strange”
Nunes recently spoke with the Washington Examiner about the bizarre situation with the House Intelligence Committee. According to Nunes, so far, Pelosi has not revealed why it is that the committee’s remaining members haven’t yet been named.
“It’s rather strange, so we don’t know,” the congressman said. “She has not agreed on ratios, we should get another member, so we don’t know yet who she is going to appoint. It’s a big mystery around here. Everybody’s waiting to see.”
Nunes was referring to the fact that Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives in the 2020 election, and Democrats lost seats, though they remain in the majority. Thus, since the House Intelligence Committee’s political makeup is proportional to the House’s makeup, Republicans should have gained seats on the committee — a fact that Nunes pointed out.
“We sure should gain,” Nunes said. “It should be 12-10, and that’s typically what it would be.”
Nunes then took a jab at the speaker, saying that Pelosi “continues to play games, and so the committee hasn’t even been organized.”
“So politicized”
Considering what America has seen happen within the ranks of the House Intelligence Committee in recent years, Nunes opined that it is “probably safer for America” that the committee has yet to be fully staffed.
“I hate to say that,” Nunes said. “It’s been so politicized over the years with becoming, essentially, the Russia hoax committee, then it turned into the impeachment committee, and that’s where it’s been.”
On top of the staffing problem, there is also the controversial situation concerning Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Swalwell, an Intelligence Committee member in previous years, was revealed earlier this year to have ties to a suspected Chinese spy, as the Examiner reported. Nunes, for his part, says he plans to investigate Swalwell if Pelosi again names him to the committee.
Nunes went on to speculate to the Examiner that when the committee is fully staffed, he expects Democrats’ “new issue” to be “domestic violence and domestic extremism, for Republicans and conservatives only, of course, so they want to investigate every conservative in America.”
Only time will tell when Pelosi finally gets around to doing her job, but Nunes isn’t wrong. The “domestic extremism” narrative is one of the politically hottest issues in D.C., and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Intelligence Committee members strike while the iron is hot.
The post Nunes criticizes Nancy Pelosi for failing to name members to the House Intelligence Committee first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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