House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) is going to increasingly desperate lengths to spin phone records indicating he played a more central role than previously understood in the Trump administration’s shadowy Ukraine policy — one geared toward leveraging official White House acts into political favors benefitting the president.

Those records, which were included in Intelligence Committee Democrats’ impeachment report, indicate that Nunes communicated on the phone with Rudy Giuliani’s indicted Ukraine fixer, Lev Parnas, including an eight-and-a-half minute call on April 12.

Parnas’s lawyers have said their client is prepared to testify that Nunes worked to advance the Ukrainian investigations into the Biden family that are at the center of an impeachment inquiry. But Nunes didn’t disclose those contacts when he served as the top Republican overseeing the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings last month.

Speaking to Maria Bartiromo for her Fox Business show on Sunday morning, Nunes advanced a type of alternative explanation that has gotten some play on Fox News, suggesting the aforementioned call he received from Parnas on April 12 may have been placed by Parnas’s wife, not Parnas himself.

“I got a call from a number that was Parnas’s wife,” Nunes said. “I remember talking to someone, and I did what I always do which is that if you don’t know who they are, you put them to staff, and you let staff work with that person.”

BARTIROMO: Were you ever on the phone with Parnas?



NUNES: "I got a call from a number that was Parnas's wife. I remember talking to someone & I did what I always do which is -- that if you don't know who they are, you put them to staff." pic.twitter.com/74O5rQdCAA — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 8, 2019

The notion that Nunes is as accessible on the phone as he wants people to believe might be easier to buy if Nunes didn’t have a reputation for ducking town halls in particular and his constituents in general. But his explanation is tough to swallow for another reason — the phone records indicate that the calls didn’t just flow from Parnas to him, but, on at least two occasions, from Nunes to Parnas.

As far-fetched as Nunes’s spin was, Bartiromo let him get away with it. Fox’s softball approach accounts for why Nunes feels comfortable going on the network, even as questions about his role in the Ukraine caper mount as he files half-a-billion-dollar lawsuits against outlets trying to get to the bottom of them. But a video published by The Intercept on Sunday shows Nunes in a less comfortable situation and going to comical lengths to avoid answering questions about his phone calls with Parnas, including waving a camera in a reporter’s face.

Rep. Devin Nunes, at glitzy New York fundraiser, refused questions about his reported contacts with Lev Parnas https://t.co/0QZuombhGI by @lhfang, @paulabowd pic.twitter.com/vu00H6FFVs — The Intercept (@theintercept) December 8, 2019

Nunes’s interview with Bartiromo marked the second Sunday in a row he’s gone on her show and made headlines for reasons that don’t really reflect positively on him. Last week, he jointed her and threatened to sue CNN and the Daily Beast for publishing pieces about him based on statements they received from lawyers representing Parnas, seemingly oblivious to the fact that’s not how lawsuits works.

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