WASHINGTON — Consultant Devin Nunes, a California Republican who emerged as one in all former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal and pugnacious allies, introduced on Monday that he would resign from Congress after 19 years to grow to be the chief govt officer of Mr. Trump’s new media and expertise firm.
Mr. Nunes confronted virtually not possible odds in being re-elected to the Central Valley district that his household has farmed for 3 generations. A brand new map rising from an unbiased residents’ redistricting fee was virtually sure to flip it from a district Mr. Trump gained handily to at least one President Biden would have gained.
However political analysts and politicians within the district had predicted that Mr. Nunes — who was the chairman, then the highest Republican on the Home Intelligence Committee in the course of the Trump administration — would leap to a newly created, Republican-friendly district. That will have allowed him to proceed his congressional profession and assume the helm of the highly effective Methods and Means Committee if Republicans took management of the Home, as they’re favored to do.
Mr. Nunes’s choice to take over Mr. Trump’s fledgling media enterprise as an alternative of the influential Home panel that writes tax and well being care coverage indicators the place he thinks energy lies within the Republican Celebration and the conservative motion.
“Lately, I used to be offered with a brand new alternative to battle for an important points I consider in,” Mr. Nunes wrote in a letter to his constituents, saying he would go away the Home on the finish of the 12 months, effectively earlier than the top of his time period.
Mr. Trump, in a information launch from the Trump Media & Expertise Group, referred to as his new chief govt “a fighter and a frontrunner.”
“Devin understands that we should cease the liberal media and massive tech from destroying the freedoms that make America nice,” he mentioned in an announcement.
Mr. Nunes was as soon as a trusted lieutenant of Speaker John A. Boehner, a Republican loyalist who clashed fiercely and publicly with the ardent conservatives within the Home Freedom Caucus. These Freedom Caucus rebels went on to grow to be the vanguard of Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Celebration, and Mr. Nunes adopted go well with.
From his perch on the Intelligence Committee, he ran interference for Mr. Trump towards accusations that his 2016 marketing campaign had collaborated with Russian intelligence. Mr. Nunes additionally organized a united Republican entrance opposing the primary impeachment of the president for withholding navy help to Ukraine to strain its authorities to dig up grime on Mr. Biden.
Mr. Nunes additionally waged public fights towards the information media and his critics, suing The Washington Publish, CNN, The Fresno Bee and Twitter over perceived slights, and going after Twitter in efforts to unmask the creator of a mocking account ostensibly written by his cow. (His household runs a dairy operation.)
Phil Arballo, the Democrat who ran towards Mr. Nunes final 12 months and is once more working for the seat in 2022, mentioned he had anticipated his opponent to chop and run on the district, which in line with an rising map would come with way more of city Fresno whereas dropping Republican strongholds to the east.
“What we find out about Devin is he’s not going to work for something,” Mr. Arballo mentioned in an interview earlier than the announcement on Monday.
