Demand Progress Calls for Devin Nunes to Step Down as Chairman from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Urges Reform of the Committee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 6, 2017
Media contact: Daniel Schuman, [email protected], 202-792-4550
In light of recent events and Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-CA) unworkable “recusal” from the investigation into alleged foreign interference with the 2016 presidential election, Demand Progress calls for Nunes to be removed from the chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and for significant reform of the committee.
Demand Progress policy director, Daniel Schuman, said:
“Rep. Nunes cannot serve as a part-time chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. So long as Rep. Nunes serves as chairman he receives intelligence briefings as a member of the Gang of 8, hires and fires all the Republican committee staff, and calls all committee hearings. His presence as the leader of HPSCI creates an atmosphere of distrust and detracts from the ability of the committee to do its work. Rep. Nunes must step down.”
HPSCI no longer functions as was intended when the House created it in the late 1970s. The committee has become too partisan, too insular, and too reliant on the intelligence community. In September 2016, a bipartisan coalition of 33 organizations wrote to House leadership with recommendations on how to strengthen congressional oversight of the intelligence community.
Demand Progress policy director, Daniel Schuman, said:
“The dysfunction in the House Intelligence Committee is a symptom of broader dysfunction in congressional oversight of the intelligence community. That’s why a broad bipartisan coalition of organizations called for major reforms, including empowering individual members of the House Intelligence Committee, strengthening Congress’s ability to engage in these issues, and instituting a top-to-bottom review of how Congress conducts oversight and how the intelligence community has operated in an era of weak oversight. HPSCI has stopped doing its job and urgently needs reform.”
The bipartisan letter is available here and the report is available here.
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