Yesterday, the House Ethics Committee cleared House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) of disclosing classified information during a March press conference, when Nunes verified that President Barack Obama had wiretapped President Donald Trump’s transition team. The allegations emerged after Nunes admitted to receiving the information that led to his conclusion from confidential White House documents.
Back in March, Nunes said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer that his role as Intelligence chair often leads him to the White House, where officials will show him confidential material relevant to ongoing investigations. He explained that using that information to base his conclusion is a key part of an investigation, a claim the Ethics Committee seemed to substantiate in its decision, finding that nothing Nunes shared in his statement was classified.
In a statement thanking the committee, Nunes said he appreciated the members’ determination that he “committed no violation of anything — no violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or any other standards of conduct.” He concluded his statement by calling out the Democrats on the panel, who made statements “that appeared to prejudge this matter before they began investigating the complaint” and implored the committee to make transcripts of their statements public, to show how partisanship doesn’t influence the outcome of congressional investigations.