Paul Ryan Says Nunes Spoke To A ‘Whistle-Blower Type Person’

In this photo taken June 9, 2015, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington. First, give pr... In this photo taken June 9, 2015, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., answers questions during an interview with The Associated Press in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington. First, give presidents the power to strike trade deals. Then overturn President Barack Obama’s health care law, overhaul the tax code and reform welfare. And someday? Figure out whether to run for president. Call it the New Ryan Plan, a map not just to big changes in the nation’s fiscal policy, but to Paul Ryan’s future. It points the ninth-term congressman and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee away from the presidential campaign trail and into the thicket of policy that he says will set the country on better financial footing. The path likely emerges at a familiar decision point _ whether to run for president _ somewhere down the road. Ryan, 45, says he might decide to take that step, someday. (AP Photo/Molly Riley) MORE LESS
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In an interview that aired Thursday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) spoke with a “whistle-blower type person” before alleging that information on President Donald Trump and his associates was incidentally collected by the intelligence community.

“He had told me that — like, a whistleblower-type person had given him some information that was new that spoke to the last administration and part of this investigation,” Ryan told CBS News. “He briefs me about it, didn’t know the content of it, only knew the nature of it and that he was going to brief others.”

Ryan said he did not tell Nunes to brief Trump but that Nunes made that decision himself.

“Oh — he was gonna brief everybody. He — I already knew he was going to go and brief. So the — what Chairman Nunes said is he just came into possession of new information that he thought was valuable to this investigation, and that he was going to go and inform people about it,” the speaker said.

When CBS’ Norah O’Donnell noted that Nunes had not shared the information with other members of the committee, Ryan said that he has not seen the documents and was unsure who had the documents.

“We want this information to be provided to Congress and we’re waiting for it to be provided to Congress,” Ryan said.

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Notable Replies

  1. Oh, the excitement…!

  2. Ryan sure sounds sort of kind of confident there.
    Stating that the information will be given to Congress really creates a dichotomy. I predict that Nunes will disclose something completely unrelated to what he may or may not have found that evening.

  3. In order to be a whistle blower then there needs to be an emergency situation to stop which is why you “blow the whistle”. Ryan admits that the information given to Nunez was about the previous administration, and so it cannot be something that needs to be stopped.

    This is a leak, and only a leak, because it is someone at the White House giving information helpful to the White House to an ally in Congress.

  4. “He briefs me about it, didn’t know the content of it, only knew the nature of it and that he was going to brief others.”

    Why was he going to brief others if he didn’t know what he was briefing them on?

  5. Avatar for tsp tsp says:

    And we know this how? Did Nunes reveal his top-secret-forever, never-tell-anyone-ever source? I thought whistle-blowers were the enemy of the Republican party. Surely Nunes would never trust the word of a lowly illegal whistle-blower. Ryan, you’re slipping deeper into the hole of irrelevance.

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