Top executives at Oracle threw money to the controversial congressman just weeks after hiring a similarly controversial Nunes ally.
By Lachlan Markay and Sam Stein
By Lachlan Markay and Sam Stein
Weeks after they hired a controversial former Trump national security
aide with ties to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes
(R-CA), top executives at the tech company Oracle made substantial
donations to Nunes’ 2018 re-election campaign.
The donations,
which totalled nearly $35,000 came from five executives, several of whom
gave so much that they surpassed the legal limit and had to be
refunded. What made the donations stand out, however, was not the size
of them—$35,000 was a relatively small amount considering the more than
$1.2 million that Nunes has raised so far this cycle. It was the timing
of the giving.
Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who worked as a top White House
intelligence aide linked to former National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, joined Oracle just weeks before its executives began writing
checks to Nunes. Cohen-Watnick had arrived at the company under a cloud
of controversy. During his time in the administration, he had been identified as having provided Nunes with reports
that showed former National Security Adviser Susan Rice had requested
the unmasking of several Trump aides listed in classified documents.
That disclosure resulted in an ethics investigation into Nunes, who was
eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.
The “unmasking” scandal
turned out to be vastly overstated. And it raised additional questions
about Cohen-Watnick’s qualifications for the job. He ultimately was let
go from the administration in August as part of a staff cleansing by
Flynn’s successor, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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