2018 strategy of @DevinNunes' opponent @JanzforCongress pretty clear with new billboard up in the Central Valley this week #CA22pic.twitter.com/ZeDWfenmfL

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— Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) November 17, 2017

The Unflushable Devin Nunes strikes again! Congressman Bootlick is subpoenaing an associate of John McCain to force him to SPILL ALL THE DIRT on the Dodgy Dossier and show that there is no Russia! If he can just get David Kramer under oath, Nunes will prove that the entire country ceased to exist after the resounding US victory in the Cold War. Just you wait and see!

But we get ahead of ourselves. When last we left our anti-hero, Nunes was leading the charge to investigate the investigators, smear the FBI as a corrupt agency of Hillary goons, and throw his own body across Pennsylvania Avenue to protect the Dear Leader. After getting caught laundering White House talking points, he'd recused himself from leading the House Intelligence Committee and put together his own cracked team of investigators.

First they teed up BULLSHIT ARGUMENT #1: Hillary is too the real Russia! But no one was buying that she hacked the DNC herself and posted John Podesta's risotto recipe online in a sinister plot to ... something. Who the hell knows!

So they moved on to howling that The Dodgy Dossier is fake and so it's NO FAIR if it was used as a basis for a FISA warrant. Nunes is still flogging that nonsense, despite Flynn's guilty plea for lying about his promise to the Russian ambassador to murder all the Russia sanctions after the election. But BULLSHIT ARGUMENT #2:How dare you listen in while I'm committing a crime!! is kind of unpersuasive. So now it's on to ...

BULLSHIT ARGUMENT #3: Okay, Russia was screwing around with our election, BUT THEY WEREN'T ON ANYONE'S SIDE!

Yeah, that's what they're going with. And Byron York, who just happened to break the story yesterday for the Washington Examiner, is going there with them.

There is a growing belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators' views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system.

Investigators who favor this theory ask a sensible question: It is likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheming, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America – except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele?

Really, Byron York? The whole thing was just a chaos operation, and Vladimir Putin didn't care who won the election? Which congressional investigators would those be saying that Steele was just a dupe getting fed false info? Blink twice if it was someone with the initials D-N!

Tell us more, Mr. York.

Knowing Steele's sources is a critical part of the congressional dossier investigation, for both sides. If one argues the document is unverified and never will be, it is critical to learn the identity of the sources to support that conclusion. If one argues the document is the whole truth, or largely true, knowing sources is equally critical.

See, the important thing is who told Christopher Steele this information, NOT whether it's true. Forget about the part where Carter Page was recruited by the Russians, how Trump was vulnerable to charges of money laundering because of his connections in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Forget Don Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting, forget his contacts with Wikileaks,forget Manafort's Ukrainian entanglements, forget the Russian disinformation campaign on social media. Sure, the dossier touched on all of that stuff, but let's concentrate on what's really important here. Who was Steele's source?

That's what Devin Nunes is doing, which is why he's subpoenaing the man who went to meet with Christopher Steele in London on John McCain's behalf. Byron York reports that Steele gave Kramer the names of all his sources when the former Undersecretary of State picked up a copy of the dossier in November of 2016. According to York, the former MI6 officer cheerfully outed all his Russian contacts to some dude from the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University. Because that is just standard 007 procedure!

But then Kramer refused to give them up to the House Intelligence Committee last week, forcing Nunes to subpoena him to answer questions under oath to the Bloodhound Gang. So come January 11, Nunes will finally be able to prove that Steele's sources were actual agents of the Russian government. And then who'll be calling who Congressman Dipshit, HUH HUH HUH???

WE HAVE QUESTIONS. And apparently so does The Hill, which corroborated the subpoena but mentioned nothing about Kramer knowing the names of Steele's Russian contacts. Suffice it to say we are highly skeptical that Steele consulted his Spycraft Manual and decided to out all his sources. There's just something about it that seems not bloody likely. But maybe this one time Nunes will manage to not shoot himself in the dick, and then we Libs will be SO OWNED. It could happen! There's always a first time.

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[Washington Examiner / The Hill]