Devin Nunes accepts award from anti-Muslim hate group

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) can’t seem to find time for his own constituents — but he did find time this week to accept an award from a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has officially designated as a hate group.

On Thursday, Nunes spoke at a dinner honoring him as the 2018 “Keeper of the Flame,” an honor bestowed upon him by the extremist anti-Muslim group “The Center for Security Policy.”

The SPLC notes that the organization is a “conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement in the United States.” The group’s founder, Frank Gaffney Jr., has hosted white supremacist Jared Taylor on his radio show.

Nunes also used his acceptance speech as an opportunity to push his favorite lies about the Russia investigation.

“We knew that the dossier, the dirt, and the fake news stories made up the bulk of the FISA [warrant],” Nunes told the crowd.

Nunes claims that when the FBI petitioned a judge for a warrant to start surveillance on a Trump campaign staffer, it did so for partisan reasons and with little evidence. But every document released so far in relation to that warrant has refuted Nunes’ claims.

Nunes also predicted that if he succeeds in declassifying more documents related to the Russia investigation, Democrats and the media will be “frightened” by what they see.

The Justice Department and the FBI are alarmed, but not by Nunes’ wild conspiracy theorizing.

The agencies have consistently warned that the documents Nunes wants to release contain sensitive information whose release could harm national security.

And given Nunes’ embarrassing track record, there is no reason to think he’ll find anything new to reveal.

Nunes and Republicans spent several weeks in January hyping a memo about the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) application that was supposed to contain bombshell revelations about the FBI being biased against Trump.

But when the memo was finally released in early February, it was an embarrassing failure that actually debunked the GOP’s attacks on the Russia probe.

In July, heavily redacted materials related to the warrant application were released — and those documents showed even more conclusively that Nunes’ attacks on the Russia investigation were all lies.

Nunes has not held an open town hall since 2010 — yet he somehow found time to spew lies to a hate group this week. That’s a message that his constituents are sure to hear loud and clear.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.