Reporter Explains Why Republican House Intel Chairman's Statements On Meeting At The White House Don't Add Up
Wash. Post's Greg Miller: “No Whistleblower That I've Ever Heard Of Is Setting Up A Meeting With The Head Of A Congressional Intelligence Committee At The White House. It Just Doesn't Work That Way”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the March 27 edition of CNN's At This Hour with Kate Bolduan:
KATE BOLDUAN (HOST): You guys have been digging deeper into last week's Intel news, and all we're talking about now, with the chairman of the House Intel Committee [Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)]. Your reporting had to do with a phone call, swapped cars, time unaccounted for, with the chairman. How does that play into this timeline?
GREG MILLER: Yeah, I mean it's unclear how -- I mean, so he's now acknowledging that he met with this source at the White House. I haven't seen the statement, so I can't tell you what time of day that meeting occurred, but we were hearing throughout last week that he had disappeared for a stretch of time on the day before he makes this big, dramatic announcement, the big unveil, and that was in the evening, that he'd gone, separated from his own staff, went off on his own for some period of time and comes back, and all of this is set in motion. And all of this is sort of really central to this question now of who is Devin Nunes working for? Is he working on the White House behalf or is he working for the House Intelligence Committee? Because you can't be -- you can't be doing both.
BOLDUAN: In your report, Greg, you had that the aides to the chairman had denied the account that you were offering them. It now seems that they're confirming some of what your account was. I'm confused as to what's changed overnight from your reporting that they're now putting out this statement saying, yes, he did have this meeting.
MILLER: Well, the denial that they gave to us was really strange, OK? So, it was -- they wouldn't discuss the particulars. They wouldn't say -- so, they wouldn't go point by point on the chronology here and say, “Well, that part's wrong” or “that part's wrong.” They just wanted to say, “No, that account is wrong.” So they could have been -- that denial could have just been pertaining to one small detail in the sequence of events, even though the larger story was completely accurate.
BOLDUAN: And from your reporting, you checked with the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], the CIA, you checked with the other agencies where this kind of classified information and a briefing would have been held. There's no account of the chairman going there. How unusual in your view in all your reporting is that the chairman would go to the Old Executive Office Building on White House grounds to meet a source?
MILLER: It's extraordinary. I mean, no whistleblower that I've ever heard of is setting up a meeting with the head of a congressional intelligence committee at the White House. It just doesn't work that way. I mean, the thing is, he has to be in a secure facility to be able to review these classified documents. Right? S
o, there's only so many locations in Washington, D.C., where he can do that. And we were just going through sort of process of elimination. Well, he didn't go to the agency, CIA, didn't go to FBI. We were just trying to point readers to the probability that he ended up going to the White House, which it turns out, he did.
Related:
AP: House Intel Chairman Met Source On White House Grounds
Previously:
Former House Intel Chief Counsel: Rep. Nunes' Actions Were A Breakdown Of The Oversight Process