Meet the little-known Republican who killed the House Russia investigation

When Mike Conaway (R-TX) decided to end the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation last week by saying the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, it vaulted the little known Republican into the spotlight.

Conaway, a soft-spoken accountant and representative of a rural district of Texas, has been at the helm of the year-long investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election since last April.

He took over the probe after the committee’s chair, Devin Nunes (R-CA), stepped aside on April 6. Nunes recused himself from the Russia investigation after the House Ethics Committee began looking into allegations that Nunes had revealed classified information, as part of a campaign against intelligence officials.

Nunes, a bombastic lawmaker who is a close ally of President Donald Trump, had accused intelligence agencies of spying on Trump’s campaign and of bias against the president in March 2017. The Ethics Committee cleared Nunes in December, saying he hadn’t revealed any classified information, but Conaway remained at the head of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation — despite rumors that Nunes was still the one making the decisions.

Last week, Conaway said he was shutting down the House investigation, arguing that all necessary evidence on the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials had been reviewed.

The committee is planning to vote on its final report Thursday, and that report is expected to exonerate the Trump campaign from any wrongdoing. Democrats are already preparing to issue a rebuttal.

Democrats had expected that Conaway would be an improvement over Nunes, and voiced hope that he could lead a bipartisan investigation. But that didn’t end up happening. And now Conaway is now preparing to issue a highly partisan report that defends the Trump campaign, just as Nunes did.

Who is Mike Conaway?

Before publicly taking over the Russia probe, Conaway was mostly known for his focus on government spending and financial discipline. He was one of the House leaders pushing the Pentagon to produce accounting reports for its $600 billion budget, and he serves on the House Armed Services Committee in addition to his position on the Intelligence Committee.

His work on military budgets ties together two parts of his background.

After graduating from college with a degree in accounting, Conaway joined the Army reserve in 1970. He spent two years at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas during the Vietnam War, and then became a professional accountant.

His accounting career kickstarted his political life. Conaway was the chief financial officer for Bush Exploration, the oil firm run by President George W. Bush before Bush became governor of Texas. After Bush won the governorship, he appointed Conaway to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy. Conaway served on the board for seven years before running for Congress in 2003 and losing by 587 votes, and then running again in 2004 after Texas’ congressional districts were redrawn.

Conaway has never won less than 70 percent of the vote from his conservative Texas district in his six reelection bids since, and due to seniority, is the second highest ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee.

Conaway took over the Russia probe, but Nunes still held the power

When the Ethics Committee started investigating Nunes, he recused himself from the Russia probe and picked Conaway to take over.

Nunes said he was stepping aside in April, after claiming that “leftwing activist groups” had falsely accused him of leaking classified information. Nunes said it was in the “best interests” of the investigation to give Conaway control.

Democrats and Republicans voiced confidence in Conaway as the new face of the investigation.

“Look forward to working on investigation with @ConawayTX11,” the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), tweeted after the announcement. “He’s great colleague & new role gives investigation fresh & important new start.”

And though many Democrats reviled Nunes, Conaway had built up a better reputation.

“He’s a nice, likable guy, I get along with him great,” said Mike Quigley (D-IL), a House Intelligence Committee member, in an interview Wednesday. “Certainly in comparison to Nunes.”

But though he moved into a position of leadership, in practice, Conaway hasn’t been in control of the investigation, according to both Democrats and Republicans.

Nunes kept most of the legal authority that the chair of a committee could use, particularly the ability to force a witness to testify through a subpoena.

“When witnesses refuse to answer, without Chairman Nunes enforcing a subpoena, we became fairly toothless,” Quigley said.

And though Conaway took over the basic operations of the probe, he didn’t really have the authority to see the more difficult decisions through. “I got the impression that he was trying,” Quigley said. “He was in a tough position.”

Nunes himself, after the ethics investigation cleared him, said that he had never really left his position at the helm of the investigation. “I’m in charge,” Nunes told Fox News in December, the day the Ethics Committee cleared him. “I was always in charge.”

Nunes’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to my request for clarification of that quote.

“Chairman Nunes, even when he said he was stepping aside … never did, and continued to make all the key decisions,” Schiff, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with Politico Monday.

But Conaway is now the public face of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation, and his announcement on March 12 closing the House investigation immediately began a bruising fight with Democrats.

Conaway said that he’d ended the investigation because the committee had looked into all relevant issues, while a spokesperson for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that Republicans didn’t want the investigation to interfere with the 2018 election in November.

In response, Schiff released a 21-page memo, detailing leads and 30 witnesses Democrats say the committee should have interviewed, including White House advisers Stephen Miller and Kellyanne Conway, who have had access to Trump during his time in the White House and might be able to talk about what Trump was thinking when he fired FBI Director James Comey.

Conaway then sent a 150-page final report draft to Democrats on March 13, who didn’t work with Conaway in writing any of it, according to the Washington Post. After a week of review including tweaks by Republicans on the committee, the Intelligence Committee is set to meet on Thursday to vote on a final version.

So in the end, it appears that a Texas lawmaker who was expected to lead a bipartisan investigation produced a report more partisan than anyone expected.