NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday celebrated the fact that “clown” Devin Nunes, R-Calif., will no longer lead the House intelligence committee now that Democrats have taken back some power in Congress.
“The House intelligence Commitee, which, Joe, you know so well, was always a bipartisan committee,” said Mitchell on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It was never run by a clown, forgive me, like Devin Nunes.”
Mitchell said Democrats will now be able to hold the White House accountable by more deeply investigating President Trump and attempting to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
[Related: Sarah Sanders: House Democrats ‘shouldn’t waste time investigating’]
“I don’t think it’s going to be chaotic and scattershot,” she said. “They’re not talking about impeachment. They are talking about subpoenas. They’re talking about tax records. They’re also talking about Bob Mueller.”
Mitchell said that under Nunes and Republican leadership, Mueller’s report, if there is one, “could have been deep-sixed,” a threat she believes is no longer an option with Democrats in control of the House, though Republicans still have a majority in the Senate.
Nunes has often been a controversial figure in Trump’s first year in office, viewed by many in the media as a partisan protector of the president who was too eager to do the White House’s bidding.
Nunes’ defenders, however, point to his work unsealing confidential documents showing that the Obama administration did engage in some surveillance of the Trump 2016 campaign and that there were agents in the FBI who were aggressively opposed to Trump’s candidacy.
