Devin Nunes: Ukraine Controversy Signals The END Of Joe Biden’s Campaign

Watch the clip of Devin Nunes' appearance on Fox News here:

Fox News has more to say about Nunes' belief that this is the end for Joe Biden:

California Rep. Devin Nunes predicted on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that Joe Biden's campaign is likely coming to an end -- all because of newly resurfaced reports about his possible misconduct in Ukraine that "first originated back when Hillary Clinton was trying to make sure Biden didn’t get in the race."

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee made the claim as The Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll showed Sen. Elizabeth Warren surging ahead of Biden as the first choice of 22 percent of the voters surveyed, while Biden was the first choice of 20 percent of the voters. Biden held a 9-point lead over Warren in the poll as recently as June.

Nunes, speaking to anchor Maria Bartiromo, said a whistleblower's allegation that President Trump had acted inappropriately during a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will ultimately backfire, and shine a light on Biden's own possible misconduct. CNN later acknowledged that the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the call, and a top Ukrainian official on Saturday defended Trump's actions.

"These stories first originated back when Hillary Clinton was trying to make sure Biden didn’t get in the race," Nunes said. "So now that these have been resurrected, I don’t know who came up with the scheme -- maybe this whistleblower really is not a partisan. We want to hear from that whistleblower, but it sure looks like the scheme has backfired. And, like I said, it looks like this is the end of Biden’s campaign. I really do... his lead is basically down to zero."

Late Sunday, Trump echoed Nunes' comments, and emphasized that Biden recently bragged about pressuring Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor when he was vice president. At the time, the prosecutor was probing a company closely linked to Biden's son, Hunter.

"Sleepy Joe Biden ... forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son's company by threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine," Trump wrote on Twitter. "That's the real story!"

Nunes said the ever-deepening schism in the Democratic Party over whether to impeach the president -- highlighted late Saturday when New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it a major "scandal" that Democrats hadn't yet voted to impeach -- would help Trump in 2020.

"The more I think that they’re out there promoting this kind of craziness and silliness, the more that the American people are put off, and the more likely President Trump is reelected,” Nunes added.

There were parallels, Nunes said, with Democrats' ultimately debunked claims that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

"This has all the hallmarks of the Russia hoax," Nunes said. "Something leaks out. ... and then it's the same reporters that report on it, the same reporters that reported on the Russia hoax. Then you move forward, and what happens? Then supposedly they come and testify -- and the night before they testify, the whistleblower who supposedly doesn't want anybody to know who this person is, or what information they have, well, it's spilled all over the pages of the Washington Post" the day before Congress was briefed on the matter.

"Whoever came up with this scheme -- it looks like somebody was trying to deflect what Biden did back in 2015," Nunes said. "This scheme seems to have backfired on Biden. I mean, Biden's already dropping in the polls."

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Trump had repeatedly asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son who had a key role in a natural gas firm that was being investigated by a Ukrainian prosecutor as part of a corruption probe.

At a conference two years after he left office, Joe Biden openly boasted about successfully pressuring Ukraine to fire that prosecutor when he was vice president.

Unverified reports circulated on left-leaning media outlets claiming that Trump could have even promised something improper in exchange for Ukraine's compliance, although the Journal reported there was no "quid-pro-quo" involved.

Trump acknowledged Sunday that he had communicated with Zelensky about Biden, and that the conversation concerned "the corruption taking place and largely the fact that we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son [contributing] to the corruption already in the Ukraine." However, the president and top officials maintained Sunday that nothing inappropriate occurred on the call.

Regarding the specifics on the allegations of Joe and Hunter Biden's possible misconduct in the Ukraine that Nunes believes is sinking him, The New York Times stated:

It was a foreign policy role Joseph R.  Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency:  browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its  act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev  in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United  States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the  country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to  corruption in his own office and among the political elite.

The  pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of  criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon  voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.

Among  those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s  younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned  by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired  prosecutor general.

Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of  Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but  lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. He would be paid as much as $50,000  per month in some months for his work for the company, Burisma  Holdings.

The broad outlines of how the Bidens’ roles intersected in Ukraine have been known for some time. The former vice president’s campaign  said that he had always acted to carry out United States policy without  regard to any activities of his son, that he had never discussed the  matter with Hunter Biden and that he learned of his son’s role with the  Ukrainian energy company from news reports.

But  new details about Hunter Biden’s involvement, and a decision this year  by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and  reopen an investigation into Burisma, have pushed the issue back into  the spotlight just as the senior Mr. Biden is beginning his 2020 presidential campaign.

They  show how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a  broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a  period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by  domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration.  Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department  officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice  President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.

“I  have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of  Burisma, or any of its officers,” Hunter Biden said Wednesday in a  statement. “I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate  governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand  globally."

Hunter  Biden, who left Burisma’s board last month, was one of many politically  prominent Americans of both major parties who made money in Ukraine  over the last decade. In several cases — most notably that of Paul  Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman — that business  came under criminal investigation that exposed a seedy side of the  lucrative Western consulting industry in Ukraine.