The Daily Beast is at it again, trying and failing to smear Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).
Whoever’s pitching The Daily Beast these stories really, really hates Nunes but can’t find any actual dirt on him, so they have to resort to making him seem to be involved in unseemly affairs while the actual evidence shows no such thing.
In the latest attempt, Beast writer Erin Banco published the headline: “Feds Eye Imaad Zuberi, Financier With Alleged Ties to Michael Cohen, Devin Nunes, and Qatar.” We can see the implication. The “feds” are investigating someone, and that person has ties to Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer who was sentenced to 3 years in prison for campaign finance violations, and Qatar, a major supporter of terrorists. Sandwiching Nunes’ name between these two gives the obvious indication that Nunes, too, is a sketchy character.
The first paragraph also puts Nunes up front in the controversy:
When news broke Monday that federal prosecutors in New York subpoenaed President Trump’s inauguration committee yesterday [sic], only one man’s name came up, according to multiple news reports. His name is Imaad Zuberi, and his name also appears on a document tied to an inaugural event featuring foreign power brokers and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the Trump ally who ran the House intelligence committee. The event is being probed by the Special Counsel’s Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
So, the alleged “ties” to Nunes include … being at the same event? It’s actually even thinner than that. Nunes did not organize that event – he was a speaker. But organizers apparently talked to Zuberi about the event and told him he couldn’t co-host it. Banco acknowledges, in paragraph six, that Zuberi didn’t even attend the event.
“A spokesperson for Zuberi said that he did not attend the event but showed up as it was ending to talk to people who were exiting the breakfast,” Banco reported.
There is no mention in the story of whether one of the people exiting the event was Nunes. The only other mention of Nunes in the story is quoting his tweet about a previous Daily Beast attempt to smear him: “Fakenews goes up in flames this week. They really think American people are pawns in their march towards socialism.”
Nunes’ tweet linked to previous Daily Wire reporting on The Daily Beast’s previous attempt to smear the former House Intelligence Committee chairman. That story, authored by four Daily Beast reporters, including Banco, made it seem like Nunes was being investigated for misspending campaign funds or colluding with Russia, as that same inaugural event became included in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s FBI probe into the Trump campaign and New York prosecutors’ investigation into the Trump inauguration.
The headline of that story also included Nunes. The main picture for the article was three pictures of Nunes colored red, the lead paragraph included Nunes, and the second half of the story was all about Nunes’ relationship with Trump and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. The story, however, gave no evidence that Nunes had done anything wrong by agreeing to speak at a routine inauguration event with foreign leaders that many past presidents have held.
Having embarrassed themselves with that article, the Beast now appears to be doubling down (though perhaps the other three writers realized how absurd the pursuit was) in smearing Nunes over nothing.