Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been making increasingly wild claims to explain away his role in the Ukraine scandal.
The California Republican has offered far-fetched explanation for his calls to Rudy Giuliani's indicted associate Lev Parnas, and he's threatened to sue CNN and The Daily Beast for reporting claims made about him by Parnas' lawyer, reported Vox.
Nunes spoke to the Ukrainian-born Parnas multiple times, according to phone records obtained by the House Intelligence Committee that Nunes sits on, but he has claimed he doesn't recall Parnas' name and also that one call may have come from Parnas' wife.
“I haven’t gone through my phone records," Nunes told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week. "I don’t really recall that name. I remember the name now because he has been indicted. I will go back and check my records, but it seems very unlikely I will be taking calls from random people.”
Nunes did not disclose his contacts with Parnas while serving as the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee that conducted the impeachment inquiry.
Parnas' attorneys have said he's willing to testify that Nunes played a central role in efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden, which forms the basis of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
Nunes told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that it's possible he spoke with Parnas' wife on April 12.
“I got a call from a number that was Parnas’s wife,” Nunes said Sunday. “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.”
Nunes didn't explain why he was speaking to the wife of a man he doesn't even recall, and he doesn't like answering questions about those calls from non-Fox reporters.
The GOP lawmaker literally fled from two Intercept reporters who asked him about the calls at a Republican Party fundraiser in New York City, in a videotaped encounter that went viral over the weekend.
