WASHINGTON _ Rep. Devin Nunes hammered two of President Donald Trump's favorite targets at Tuesday morning's impeachment hearing: the media and the unidentified whistleblower who thrust the president's July phone call with the Ukrainian president into the national spotlight.
Nunes, R-Calif., used almost the entirety of his opening statement for the testimonies of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, director for European affairs for the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, a special adviser to Vice President Mike Pence overseeing Ukraine issues, to sharply criticize the media.
Nunes said most media outlets are the "puppets" of Democrats, and Democrats are media's "masters."
"Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won't give it to them straight, they'll go elsewhere to find it," Nunes concluded his remarks. "Which is exactly what the American people are doing."
Nunes also used his allotted time for questioning to try to find out the identity of the whistleblower, earning a rebuke from House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and praise from his colleagues.
Nunes' focus during the hearings has closely matched Trump's own defense of his actions, and some details within the impeachment hearings suggest Nunes could be coordinating with the White House. The president, like Nunes, has disparaged the news media and demanded the public disclosure of the whistleblower's identity.
The White House declined to comment on the relationship between Nunes and Trump and whether the two had launched a coordinated attack.
Nunes' performance grabbed the attention of Trump, who shared highlights of Nunes from the Tuesday hearing on Twitter.
"I just got to watch _ and the Republicans are absolutely killing it. They are doing so well. Because it's a scam. It's a big scam," the president said at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
The president's comments mirrored Nunes.' He claimed the media is "sick" and "dangerous" on Tuesday morning.
"We have a very corrupt media. And I hope they can get their act straightened out because it's very, very bad and very, very dangerous for our country," Trump said at the Cabinet meeting.
Trump is accused of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July 25 phone call to open a public investigation into former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for releasing taxpayer-funded military aid to Ukraine. Trump says his request for a "favor" was not linked to military assistance, and he is not guilty of impeachable conduct.
The exchange between Trump and Zelenskiy raised alarms among some U.S. intelligence staff, one of whom filed a whistleblower complaint through an inspector general. The complaint led to the impeachment inquiry at the House Intelligence Committee.
The White House has no formal participation in the Capitol Hill hearings, making the president totally reliant on Nunes and Republican lawmakers such as Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan to push Trump's message in the televised question-and-answer session
A White House official said that lawmakers on the committee who asked were briefed prior to the hearing by the White House legislative affairs staff and Trump's two-person impeachment messaging team, comprised of Tony Sayegh and Pam Bondi.
Sayegh and Bondi, who report to White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, were spotted attending meetings on Capitol Hill on Monday, their first official day on the job.
Other hints about Nunes' coordination with the White House include Nunes at an open hearing last week reading from a printed copy of an April call between Trump and Zelenskiy just minutes after the White House released a rough transcript of the conversation.
The White House said a staffer may have handed the document to Nunes before Schiff opened the hearings. The congressman's office did not respond to a request for comment.
In the April call that Nunes described last week, Trump congratulated Zelenskiy on his election. Trump did not ask for an investigation at that time, according to the rough transcript.
At the hearing, Nunes said, "I read that into the record so now the American people know the very first call that President Trump had with Zelenskiy."
Mieke Eoyang, vice president of Third Way's National Security Program and a former House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Democratic staff member, said Nunes' rhetoric "seems to have an audience of one," referring to Trump.
Grisham, the White House press secretary, told McClatchy amid the latest round of hearings, Trump has "watched a bit between meetings, and is of course being briefed by staff."
She told reporters Friday that Trump would be watching Nunes specifically.
"The president will be watching Congressman Nunes' opening statement, but the rest of the day he will be working hard for the American people," she said.
Trump tweeted videos of Nunes' full opening statement on Friday, which the top-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee used to argue Democrats have been "trying to oust President Trump from the day he was elected."
Aiding Trump in his search for the whistleblower, Nunes on Tuesday tried to get Vindman to answer questions on who he spoke to in the intelligence community about the July call between Trump and Zelenskiy.
Vindman refused to answer Nunes' questions, citing guidance from Schiff directing him not to name U.S. officials who are employed by intelligence agencies. Schiff said Nunes and other Republicans were not allowed to use questioning to try to discover the whistleblower's identity, and the committee would continue to protect that person's anonymity.
Vindman said the intelligence official he told was a "properly cleared individual" with a need to know, and that he did not personally know who the whistleblower was.
Nunes has long been one of Trump's closest allies in Congress and served on Trump's presidential transition team.
In the first two years of Trump's administration, Nunes as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee sought to turn the tables on investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. He temporarily recused himself of his leadership position on Russia-related investigations in 2017 amid questions about whether he improperly released classified information.
A former Nunes aide on the committee, Kashyap "Kash" Patel, is currently serving as a National Security Council senior staff member. Patel moved to the White House earlier this year.
Both Nunes and Patel are suing news organizations. Patel this week filed a lawsuit against Politico, alleging it defamed him in an October story based on sources who were familiar with closed-door testimony at the impeachment inquiry.
Nunes is suing McClatchy, the parent company of The Fresno Bee, and Hearst, publisher of Esquire Magazine, alleging news stories about him defamed him, hindering his successful reelection campaign and his ability to lead the House Intelligence Committee.
McClatchy is fighting Nunes' lawsuit against the company and has called it a "cynical maneuver to score cheap political points."
Nunes likely will take a leading role at Wednesday's impeachment inquiry and potentially be a subject of questions to witnesses.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who has been repeatedly implicated by other witnesses in the pressuring of Ukraine, is scheduled to testify. He has testified at a closed-door hearing that he and Nunes had met in Brussels for coffee in mid-August.
Sondland said he did not remember Ukraine coming up during that meeting, and it had only been him and Nunes there.
