Friend,

I wanted to share an important article, in which Breitbart reports that Fusion GPS, the same firm responsible for the infamous Steele dossier, coordinated with the Fresno Bee to plant a salacious and fake story about me during the 2018 election cycle.
Please find the article here: [link removed]
and pasted below.

Fusion GPS Leader Bragged in 2019 Book About Planting FalseAttacks Against Devin Nunes in Local Newspaper
MATTHEWBOYLE
28 Aug 2020 Washington, DC 11:02
HousePermanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) ranking member Rep. DevinNunes (R-CA) was the target of opposition research hits that a local newspaper,owned by a broader national chain, dutifully reprinted on behalf of Fusion GPSwithout disclosing to its readers the questionable source of the information.
The Fresno Bee published a story in the leadup to the 2018 midtermelections, in late May 2018, that claimed in its salacious headline that Nuneswas associated with cocaine and prostitutes at a yacht party. “A yacht,cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiserevent,” read the headline from Fresno Bee reporter MacKenzie Mays on the May 23,2018, article.
The article itself,however, does not back up the headline. What happened was that a winery thatNunes has a minority ownership stake in—meaning he has no managementdecision-making authority, just a minority stake in the firm—held a charityauction for a yacht ride. On the yacht ride, the winners allegedly, per alawsuit from a winery staffer at the event, had been doing lots of cocaine andhad prostitutes on board who engaged in nefarious acts. While that sounds likean awful experience for the staffer who endured it—the lawsuit was settled outof court—the idea this had anything at all to do with Nunes is simply untrue.
Kelly Carter, thespokesperson for the winery named Alpha Omega, made that clear in a statementto the newspaper. Rep. Devin Nunes is one of a few friends [Alpha Omega ownerRobin Baggett] invited to invest in the winery in 2005. None of the investorshas ever been involved with the management of the company. Robin is the solemanaging partner and ultimate decision maker at Alpha Omega,” Carter said.
While Nunes did notcomment for the original story, he did later run a series of advertisementsagainst the newspaper over the salacious article for conduct to which he had noconnection—pretty aggressive for a sitting member of Congress to challenge hislocal newspaper in broadcast advertisements.
Nunes says in one of the 2018 ads:
Like you, I live inthe San Joaquin Valley. My family lives here, my daughters go to public schoolshere, and I spend most of my time here when I’m not in Washington or visitingUnited States military and intelligence personnel abroad. Sadly, since the lastelection, the Fresno Bee has worked closely with radical left wing groups topromote fake news stories about me. Now, I signed up for this job and I findthe attacks amusing. I haven’t said much about the Bee’s strange crusadeagainst me even when reporters went creeping around my neighbors’ and relatives’homes. But the Bee has run multiple articles slandering a CaliforniaAgri-Business simply because I’m one of its investors. It’s time to set therecord straight. For many years, the owner of Alpha Omega, a small,family-owned winery and vineyard, has donated the use of its boat to charitiesfor underprivileged kids. In 2015, one of the purchasers of this auction
itemabused the use of the boat. The Bee has run numerous false stories about thisincident.
Nunes then says in the 2018 ad that listeners can “hear the realstory” in a statement provided by the winery for broadcast. In that statement,a spokesperson for Alpha Omega says that the Fresno Bee “cited false information stating thepeople aboard the boat were Alpha Omega investors.”
The winery spokespersonstatement continues:
In fact, as weinformed the Bee, those aboard the boat had no personal or business connectionto the winery or its owners. Furthermore, a Bee editorial claimed it’sunclear if Mr. Nunes was affiliated with the fundraiser for the boat when infact we repeatedly told the Bee he had no affiliation with it whatsoever. TheFresno Bee also falsely reported that Alpha Omega sold wine to Russia while Mr.Nunes led an investigation of that country. We would appreciate it if the FresnoBee would stop regurgitating false stories when it has the facts.
Nunes concluded inthe ad that he does not mind the criticism of him, but the paper’s attacks onlocal businesses are a bridge too far:
The Bee’s band ofcreeping correspondents can go after me but for them to drag a family companythrough the mud and hurt innocent people’s livelihoods to advance theirpolitical agenda is wrong. The Fresno Bee and its parent company — McClatchy —should apologize to Alpha Omega, retract their false news stories and stopembarrassing the San Joaquin Valley.
The ads prompted the Fresno Bee’seditorial board to write a lengthy piece claiming Nunes’s claims in them were“fake news.”
In the editorial, the Bee’sfirst claim from Nunes that it took issue with was him saying in the ad thatthe newspaper “has worked closely with radical left wing groups to promote fakenews stories about me.”
In response, the Bee claimed this was untrue. Thenewspaper’s editorial board wrote:
The Bee has neverdone any such thing. Does Nunes identify those groups he refers to? No. And hecan’t, because such a thing never happened. The Bee’s newsroom followstime-honored ethical standards of journalism, and did for this story. One ofthe tenets is to let all subjects in a story have their say. But since Nunesrefused to be interviewed for this story, his side could not be reported. Hemade it one-sided by his own choosing. By not talking to The Bee, then claimingthe story to be “fake news,” Nunes reveals his strategy for dealing with Beejournalists. He also loves to combine the words ‘radical’ and ‘left wing’ tomake a point to his conservative base.
The newspaper published this editorial in mid-June 2018, beforeevidence later emerged in November 2019 that proved Nunes correct—and the Bee incorrect.
Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the now-debunkedhoax of Russia collusion—which Nunes played a critical role in unraveling—wasapparently behind the hit against Nunes, its leaders Glenn Simpson and PeterFritsch wrote in their book Crime inProgress. Simpson and Fritsch wrote:
In the end, Fusionfound an obscure bit of litigation that lit up the race. In May, weeks afterthat discovery, Nunes’s ownership stake in the Napa winery Alpha Omega becamenational news when The Fresno Bee reported on a lawsuit filed in Californiastate court by a young woman who had worked serving wine at a 2015 tastingevent aboard the winery’s sixty-two-foot yacht.
In other words, theFusion GPS leaders Simpson and Fritsch admit—or perhaps, more accurately,brag—in their book about being the ones who dug this up and got the newspaperto run the story.
Simpson and FusionGPS were of course the ones behind the now discredited anti-Trump ChristopherSteele dossier that led to the Russia hoax investigation. But when that wasunraveling, according to Simpson’s and Fritsch’s book, they were engaged in asmear campaign against the leading Republican in Congress who was unpacking theentire scandal—and getting his local newspaper and the newspaper chain that ownsit, McClatchy, to smear him in any way they could.
Nunes’s role in unraveling Simpson’s work to spark thenow-debunked Russia scandal against Trump is featured in an upcoming film by Amanda Milius, the daughter oflegendary screenwriter and director John Milius, titled The Plot Against the President.Thedocumentary is a film version of Lee Smith’s bestselling book with the sametitle.
But the fact that Fusion GPS went to such lengths to try topolitically destroy Nunes—and the fact that McClatchy newspapers and the Fresno Bee went along with it—are particularlyinteresting. Fresno Bee editor Joe Kieta did not reply toBreitbart News’s request for comment about Fusion GPS’s leadership braggingabout planting the anti-Nunes hit in his newspaper—something that provesNunes’s 2018 ad against the paper correct, and the newspaper’s 2018 editorialsupposedly rebutting the ad incorrect.
What’s even more interesting about this is that the yacht,winery, cocaine, and prostitutes fake news hit is not the only hit piece thatMcClatchy’s newspapers published on Nunes that Fusion GPS is taking credit for.From McClatchy’s D.C. bureau, reporter Kate Irby bylined two pieces—both inJuly 2018—that claimed respectively Nunes misusedcampaign fundsfor Boston Celtics tickets and a Vegas trip, and for private jet charters. It turns out, according toSimpson’s and Fritsch’s book, both came from Fusion GPS.
They wrote in thebook regarding the Vegas and Boston trips that “Fusion discovered” theinformation that would find its way into the McClatchy report, and regardingthe private plane report that “Fusion found” the information that would findits way into that followup story. Unsurprisingly, like much of Fusion GPS’swork, neither of these stories has progressed beyond the original McClatchyarticle–suggesting that the supposed allegations of impropriety against Nunesfrom 2018 did not rise to the level of something serious enough for any actualaction against him. In other words, they were nothing more than anotherpolitical smear.
This hyper-targetedpolitical campaign was so unusual for Fusion GPS, which had its case againstTrump crumbling thanks to Nunes’s work unraveling the dossier, that Simpson andFritsch even admit it in the book. They wrote:
Fusion ordinarilydidn’t work on congressional races, but as the [2018] election drew closer, thefirm began to mull a few ways it could have an impact. Later, it would decideto design and launch a more systematic cyber-monitoring campaign, but first itwent small, focusing on a single congressional district in California’s heavilyagricultural Central Valley. That solidly red seat happened to have beenoccupied since 2003 by one Devin Nunes.
McClatchy actually had a very close working relationship withFusion GPS, far beyond its hits on Nunes. The newspaper chain admitted in a July 2017 article that it had obtained the now-infamousand demonstrably false dossier before it was publicly released by BuzzFeed. Asfar back as January 2017, McClatchy was pushing content from the dossier in the immediateaftermath of its release. Fusion GPS also pushed a false story—that McClatchy published—alleging thatconservative attorney Cleta Mitchell was aware of a secret Russian plot tolaunder money to the Trump campaign through the NRA. McClatchy even falselyreported that ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was in Prague, according to cell phone records, and claimed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller hadproof of that, even though Mueller’s final report debunked it.
Nunes is currently waging a number of different lawsuits againstvarious establishment media outlets, including McClatchy, as well as againstFusion GPS.
Paid for and authorized by Devin Nunes for Congress
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