Devin Nunes calls for White House-linked transparency office to declassify government documents  by Naomi Lim | December 16, 2018 | washingtonexaminer.com   "Our investigation is essentially over. We have everything that we need. What we're lacking now is that we're lacking the declassification by the president," Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox News of his panel's probe into the Justice Department and the FBI's handling of the Russia inquiry. "For various reasons, the president or his staff doesn't want to do it. Therefore, I think it's important if the president doesn't want his hands on it, we have to have somebody, some office, that's going to look at all of these issues and all of these documents that need to be declassified," Nunes said.  "I'm going be working with my colleagues to work on and send some example over to the president of a transparency type of office, so that the Congress, the American people, others can put in requests of documents or issues that they want declassified. That way the president doesn't have to take this full burden on and the Congress has somewhere where we can go to try to avoid the swamp creatures from getting involved and ensuring that the American public is kept in the dark."   Nunes' proposal follows the delayed release of Russia-related materials after Trump changed his mind in September about ordering their immediate declassification. Instead, the president delegated the responsibility to the DOJ inspector general. The change was reportedly prompted by meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and other officials.   "We need to make sure that there's light. I always say that sunlight is the best disinfectant in Washington," Nunes said Sunday.  "The more that we can get declassified, I think, the better. And I think an easy way to do it is to create an office that actually just works directly under the White House that specializes in evaluating this documentation and errs on the side of the more sunlight the better to make sure that everything we want declassified gets declassified."   Nunes in early 2019 will become the ranking intelligence committee Republican. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, Calif., is slated to take over as chairman.   Washington Examiner Source Article Here