VISALIA – President-Elect Donald Trump announced a number of important positions to his cabinet, including Tulare-native Devin Nunes, who will head up the intelligence board and will function as the president’s eyes and ears monitoring the intelligence community as a private citizen.
Nunes served in Congress representing portions of Fresno and Tulare Counties between 2003 and 2022. Nunes served as the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during Trump’s first term. He resigned his seat effective Jan. 1, 2022, in order to become CEO of TruthSocial, Trump’s social media company. He will continue to operate as CEO while serving the Trump Administration.
Trump made the announcement on TruthSocial on Sat. Dec 14.
“I am pleased to announce that I will appoint TruthSocial CEO Devin Nunes as Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which consists of distinguished citizens from outside of the Federal Government,” Trump wrote. “Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities.”
Nunes was at the center of controversy surrounding interactions between White House officials and Russian agents and discredited claims of collusion between Russia and members of the administration of former President Barack Obama. Nunes was one of the strongest backers of Trump when allegations of collusion between members of his staff and Ukraine surfaced late in his first term which led to Congress ultimately impeaching Trump, according to impeachment articles filed by Congress.
Opponents of Trump are calling the pick “dangerous,” citing the information that Nunes will have at his disposal and his involvement with the social media company.
“As chairman, Devin Nunes will have access to all of the intelligence that is gathered by the intelligence community,” former U.S. Attorney General for the Eastern District of Michigan Barbara McQuade said during an interview with MSNBC. “With that information, and simultaneously serving as the head of TruthSocial, it means he has the ability to post things he shouldn’t know.”
Trump is the first president in U.S. history to face criminal indictment for his actions before, during and after his term in office, though dozens of former presidents have been accused of crimes, most famously Richard Nixon, who secretly wiretapped conversations and conspired to spy on his political rivals but was pardoned by President Gerald Ford, escaping the threat of prosecution, according to the U.S. Library of Congress.
Trump was convicted on charges of falsifying records to conceal payments to a former porn actress ahead of his 2016 election to the White House in May 2024. He faces numerous charges relating to election interference and records violations stemming from investigations by state and federal prosecutors that will presumably be on hold during his second term, as decided by the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States.
Nunes has faced his own issues after a whistleblower claimed the CEO deliberately understaffed TruthSocial and refused to hire American workers, instead shifting customer support and technical services to Balkan states, as reported by ProPublica and the Fresno Bee. The alleged whistleblower complaint was lodged secretly in November but was released to ProPublica for publication after top executives with Truth Media were allegedly forced out of the company.
