As the chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes should in theory be a boon to the White House. After all, the California congressman and tireless Donald Trump ally is theoretically in charge of oversight when it comes to America’s intelligence community—a body the president has publicly mistrusted practically since day one. Unfortunately for Nunes, try as he might to serve as a loyal Trumpian lapdog, his efforts are repeatedly foiled. He was caught on camera sneaking into the White House to share dubious information about the Obama administration’s alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower during the election, thus sidelining himself in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, and screwing over National Security Council aide Ezra Cohen-Watnick. (In fact, the alleged wiretapping in all likelihood never occurred, rendering the point of his midnight White House rendezvous moot.) And of course, there was the time earlier this year when he whipped up a media frenzy over a memo alleging the F.B.I. and the D.O.J. were maliciously surveilling Trump campaign aide Carter Page by misleading a judge, only to have the memo fall flat on close review.

Given his myriad failures, no one could have blamed Nunes for throwing in the towel and returning to his noble work defending Trump in the media, scaring donors into supporting the president’s re-election efforts, and formulating his own propaganda-peddling media outlet. But it seems more remains to be discovered of Nunes’s Homeland-style ambitions. Last year, the congressman reportedly sent two aides to London without the knowledge of the British or U.S. governments, to find former spy Christopher Steele, author of the dossier that (in his mind) started it all, and get him to answer for . . . something. Steele’s lawyers denied Nunes’s aides access to their client, so earlier this month, per a new report from The Atlantic, Nunes himself traveled to London with the goal of gathering his own clandestine intelligence on Steele, a former MI6 agent, as well as Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official with longterm ties to Steele, and one of Trump’s favorite new “deep state” punching bags:

According to two people familiar with his trip across the pond who requested anonymity to discuss the chairman’s travels, [Nunes] was investigating, among other things, Steele’s own service record and whether British authorities had known about his repeated contact with a U.S. Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr. To that end, Nunes requested meetings with the heads of three different British agencies—MI5, MI6, and the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ . . .

Unfortunately for Nunes, it seems his efforts amounted to little:

A U.K. security official, speaking on background, said “it is normal for U.K. intelligence agencies to have meetings with the chairman and members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.” But those meetings did not pan out—Nunes came away meeting only with the U.K.’s deputy national-security adviser, Madeleine Alessandri. The people familiar with his trip told me that officials at MI6, MI5, and GCHQ were wary of entertaining Nunes out of fear that he was “trying to stir up a controversy.” Spokespeople for Alessandri and Nunes did not return requests for comment, and neither did the press offices for MI5 and MI6. GCHQ declined to comment.

Evidently, Nunes has learned nothing from his various failed attempts at spy play. Moreover, his unquenchable desire to prove the existence of an elitist conspiracy, regardless of the facts, is emblematic of the embattled mindset of the White House to which he has sworn his fealty.