Republican Rep. Devin Nunes is likely to face an ethics investigation over allegations he met with an ex-Ukrainian prosecutor at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee said Saturday. This would be the second investigation by the House Ethics Committee into the California Republican in two years. “Quite likely, without question,” House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash) said when asked by MSNBC’s Joy Reid whether Nunes (R-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Republican and a longtime Trump ally, could be investigated. An associate of Rudy Giuliani has claimed to have information on meetings Nunes allegedly had with Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor general, according to a Friday CNN report.
The CNN report, which Nunes called “demonstrably false,” says Giuliani associate Lev Parnas put Nunes in contact with Shokin as part of a bid to find damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Shokin, who was ousted from his position for not pursuing corruption investigations in Ukraine, has fueled conservative conspiracy theories that Biden forced Ukrainian authorities to fire him in order to engage in a corrupt cover-up.
Nunes told Breitbart News that he intends to sue both The Daily Beast and CNN for publishing the story, which he claims was shopped around by “some political operative.” The Daily Beast stands by its reporting.
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In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Nunes used the threatened lawsuits as a way to avoid answering questions about any possible meetings with Ukrainians, claiming there “is criminal activity here.”
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