“Trump’s stooge” is getting top-level security clearance.Shealah Craighead/White House/ZUMA
Devin Nunes, the ex-California congressman and current head of Trump’s struggling social media platform, Truth Social, is getting his prize for being the next president’s long-serving yes-man.
On Saturday, Trump announced that he would appoint Nunes as chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of up to 16 private citizens who get high-level security clearance to advise the president on “the effectiveness with which the [intelligence community] is meeting the nation’s intelligence needs.”
In his Truth Social post announcing the news, Trump said Nunes would assume the role “while continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group,” the company that runs Truth Social. The role reportedly does not require Senate confirmation.
As my colleague David Corn has reported, as former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Nunes attacked the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election as a baseless partisan smear by Democrats—which, in Trump’s eyes, made him uniquely qualified to receive top-level security clearance.
“Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Trump wrote in the announcement.
Nunes will draw on a robust track record of foot entering mouth. He compared homeless people to a “zombie apocalypse”; created a fake news site that insisted male privilege doesn’t exist; sued both the Fresno Bee, a local newspaper in California’s Central Valley, and a satirical Twitter account purporting to be his cow.
The Bee famously once called him “Trump’s stooge.” That seems to be the main qualification needed for the next admin.