In response to @MZHemingway’s critique of my story on Devin Nunes, many of her complaints are about subjective interpretations of events and tone. But since she alleges that my story is “riddled with errors,” I want to respond to her various claims of factual inaccuracies. 1/
My piece didn’t attempt to re-litigate the debate over the Abbotabad documents. Suffice it to say, there are people—like Steve Hayes and Thom Joscelyn—who believe the documents are a Rosetta stone. 2/
There are others, like Ned Price, who question their value—as well as the motivations behind the decision of Mike Pompeo, as CIA director, to release them. Putting aside that debate, there’s nothing in my story about Nunes’s May 2013 trip to Centcom that’s inaccurate. 3/
With regard to Nunes’s travel, the former Intelligence Committee staffer I quoted referred to Djibouti (as well as Jakarta) as the types of “God-awful places” Nunes visited—not that Nunes actually went to Djibouti. 4/
Nor did I ever imply that such a trip would be foolish; in fact, I wrote that Nunes was a “prodigious and daring” traveler. 5/
As for Nunes’s campaign for the College of Sequoias board, Johnny Amaral, who’s known Nunes since high school and is his former Congressional chief of staff, told me that Nunes ran because he believed the board was going to shut down the college’s farm. 6/
When I later interviewed John Zumwalt, I was surprised when he told me that the board had no intention of closing the farm. I quoted him saying as much. I also quoted him saying he thought Nunes was a good board member. 7/
Nothing in my article about the COS board, the COS farm, Zumwalt, and Nunes is inaccurate or untruthful. 8/
Hemingway writes that my report that Michael Ellis, as a HPSCI staffer, was dispatched to Germany as part of the Benghazi investigation to question a U.S. drone operator there isn’t true, citing “multiple sources on the House Intelligence Committee familiar with his travels.” 9/
A well-placed source familiar with the Benghazi investigation confirmed to me that Ellis was the HPSCI staffer who went to Germany. Hemingway’s sources tell a different story, so I’m taking steps to further verify the account in my story. 10/
Nunes told Hemingway that “he was not notified in advance” that Comey would reveal in his testimony at HPSCI’s open hearing that the F.B.I. was conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. 11/
A HPSCI source told me that Nunes was notified. Nunes certainly knew about the investigation before the hearing, as Comey explained in his testimony that day: 12/
“[W]e have taken the extraordinary step in coordination with the Department of Justice of briefing this Congress’ leaders, including the leaders of this committee, in a classified setting in detail about the investigation but I can’t go into those details here.” 13/
Nunes told Hemingway that it’s “totally false” that he discussed with Trump becoming director of national intelligence. A transition official told me Nunes did. 14/
In the same CNN interview Hemingway cites in which Nunes claimed that he visited the White House during the day, rather than at night, to review evidence that Trump or his aides had been swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies, 15/
Nunes also denied that he’d met with Trump aides during that visit. We now know Nunes was not telling the truth about the latter. Should we believe him about the former? 16/
Of course, I would have been happy to discuss all of this with Nunes—and include the denials Nunes ultimately gave Hemingway in my original story. But he refused to talk to me. 17/
What’s more, when The New York Times Magazine’s research department sent Nunes’s spokesman, Jack Langer, a list of detailed questions—which included all of the things he now denies— 18/
Langer provided the statement we quoted in the article about “laughable fictional stories and some entertaining conspiracy theories.” The research department followed up with Langer, asking him: 19/
“Can you indicate which facts are wrong or, specifically, ‘fictional’? The fact-checking process is in place to ensure as full and fair a representation as we have access to.” 20/
“If there are particular fallacies that you or Rep. Nunes are willing to respond to, we would be eager and amenable to incorporating those responses into the article.” Langer never responded. 21/
My Nunes article does not have “dozens of factual errors,” nor did I “ma[k]e *a lot* of stuff up,” as Hemingway has written on Twitter. 22/
My article is not, as Hemingway wrote in her story, “riddled with factual errors that are denied on the record by multiple sources.” The only person Hemingway has on the record denying anything is Nunes—denials I would have included in my story if he’d made them to me. 23/
I stand by my reporting and the story. 24/24
