10 Things You Didn't Know About Devin Nunes
A California farmer is now at the center of the most fraught congressional investigations in decades. (kek, farmer)
April 5, 2017
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Devin Nunes was born in Tulare, California, near Fresno, on Oct. 1, 1973. He grew up raising cattle on a farm operated by his family, originally immigrants from Portugal, for three generations.
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He attended Tulare Union High School and attended the College of the Sequoias before obtaining his bachelor’s in agricultural business from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he also earned a master’s in agriculture.
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He won his first election, unseating an 18-year veteran of the College of the Sequoias board of trustees when he was a 23-year-old student.
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Nunes got his start in government in 2001, when President George W. Bush appointed him to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development section as the California state director.
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He ran for Congress in 2002, winning his seat at just 29 years old. In his second term, he was given an assignment to the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
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Nunes and his wife, the former Elizabeth Tamariz, have three daughters: Evelyn, Julia and Margaret.
7. As a low-profile member of the rank and file, Nunes wasbest known for battling environmentalists over water rights. He also made headlines when he criticized members of his own party for engineering a government shutdown in 2013 in protest of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
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He was tapped by former House Speaker John Boehner to be chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence in 2015, tasked with oversight of the nation's spy agencies.
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A longtime friend of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who represents nearby Bakersfield, California, Nunes is more closely allied with House leadership than the Freedom Caucus. Although he wasn’t an early endorser of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, he was named an adviser to Trump’s transition after the election.
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The intelligence committee chairmanship has put Nunes in the driver's seat for the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a high-wire act that threatens to derail his career. Nunes has been criticized by lawmakers in both parties for his handling of the investigation, especially President Trump’s allegations that his predecessor spied on his campaign and leaked information for political reasons.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-04-05/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-devin-nunes