Ranking member of the House intelligence committee Rep. Devin Nunes of California gives his opening statement as Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testify on November 19, 2019 (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - In his opening statement at the start of Tuesday's Democrat-led impeachment inquiry, Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) accused the liberal media of being "puppets of the Democratic Party," offering "biased misreporting," first on the Russia hoax and now on the Ukraine "frenzy."

If you watched the impeachment hearings last week you may have noticed a disconnect between what you actually saw and the mainstream media accounts describing it. When you saw three diplomats who dislike President Trump's Ukraine policy discussing second-hand and third-hand conversations about their objections with the Trump policy. Meanwhile, they admitted they had not talked to the president about these matters. And they were unable to identify any crime or impeachable offense the president committed. What you read in the press were accounts of shocking, damning and explosive testimony that fully supports the Democrats' accusations. If these accounts have a familiar ring, it's because this is the same preposterous reporting the media offered for three years on the Russian hoax. On a nearly daily basis, the top news outlets in America reported breathlessly on the newest bombshell revelations showing that President Trump and everyone surrounding him were Russian agents.

Nunes read some of the headlines that turned out to be false.

"There was no objectivity or fairness in the media's Russia stories,” he said, “just as (there is) a fevered rush to tarnish and remove a president who refuses to pretend that the media are something different from what they really are -- puppets of the Democratic Party.

“With their biased misreporting on the Russia hype, the media lost confidence of millions of Americans; and because they refused to acknowledge how badly they botched the story, they've learned no lessons and simply expect Americans will believe them as they try to stoke another partisan frenzy.”

Nunes repeated three questions the Democrats and their media "puppets" don't want asked or answered.

They include questions about the Democrats' prior contact with the whistle-blower; the whistle-blower's connections to Democrat politicians; and the attempt to shield the whistle-blower from testifying in public.

“The media have joined the Democrats in dismissing the importance of cross-examining this crucial witness. Now that the whistle-blower has successfully kick-started impeachment, he has disappeared from the story, as if the Democrats put the whistle-blower in their own witness protection program," Nunes said.

Nunes’ second question involved the full extent of Ukraine's election meddling against the Trump campaign – something covered in-depth by The Hill’s investigative reporter Jon Solomon, who is now being pilloried by liberal politicians and pundits.

Nunes noted that one Democrat on the intelligence committee told a Hill writer that she would stop speaking to the publication because it had run stories by Solomon on Ukraine, Burisma and Hunter Biden.

Solomon's reporting has "become inconvenient for the Democratic narrative," Nunes said.

“The media is furiously smearing and libeling Soloman," Nunes continued. In fact, he added, "The Hill told its staff yesterday it would conduct a review of Solomon's Ukraine reporting."

Nunes urged viewers to read some of Solomon's stories "and draw your own conclusions about the evidence Solomon has gathered."

And third, Nunes asked (again) why Burisma hired Hunter Biden?

"What did he do for them?” Nunes asked. “Did his position affect U.S. Government actions under the Obama administration? We have now heard testimony from the Democrats' own witnesses that diplomats were concerned about a conflict of interest involving Hunter Biden.

“That's because he had secured a well-paid position despite having no qualifications on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father was vice president charged with overseeing Ukrainian issues."

Nunes said if Democrats and their media promulgators were so concerned about bribery, “you would they would take some interest in Burisma paying hunter Biden $83,000 a month. And you think they would be interested in Joe Biden threatening to withhold U.S. loan guarantees unless the Ukrainians fired a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. That would be a textbook example of bribery.”

Nunes said the liberal media is free to act as Democrat puppets, lurching form hoax to hoax, “But they cannot reasonably expect to do so without alienating half the country who voted for the president they're trying to expel.



“Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won't give it to them straight, they'll go elsewhere to find it. Which is exactly what the American people are doing,”Nunes concluded.





