[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] It’s been almost a decade since then-House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes first launched his investigation with now-FBI director Kash Patel into the scandal that became known as “Russiagate.”

His watershed memo back in 2018—dubbed the “Nunes memo”—detailed what he describes as grave abuses in how the FBI obtained surveillance warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to surveil Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and later the first Trump administration.

It’s “the biggest scandal in U.S. history, by a long way,” he says.

In July 2025, the Trump administration released new documents shedding more light on the Russia probe, revealing the creation of an intelligence community assessment (ICA) at President Barack Obama’s behest that alleged Russian President Vladimir Putin had interfered in the presidential election in order to help Trump.

Nunes is currently serving as chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, a body created in 1956 during the Eisenhower era to advise the president on U.S. intelligence activities and provide an external check on the intelligence community.

In this episode, we sit down to reflect on the “Russiagate” saga, almost a decade later, and what accountability he’d like to see.

We also dive into his work as CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns Truth Social.

TMTG recently announced an unexpected merger with the pioneering nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies. Why did they choose to make this move, and why is he convinced nuclear fusion technology will be critical to America’s future?

Correction: A previous version of the episode incorrectly stated the name of Devin Nunes’ company. It’s Trump Media & Technology Group. The Epoch Times regrets the error. 

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Devin Nunes, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders. 

Devin Nunes: 

It’s great to be back. Great to be with you. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

Well, I was just looking at one of our first interviews back in October of 2019, and we were talking about something we called Spygate back then. These days, most people know it as Russiagate. I called you the head of Objective Medusa, if you recall that name. But this is, I'll get you to tell me what that was in a moment, okay? Because I doubt a lot of people will remember. But ultimately, this is what you said, okay? You said we need a full accounting of everything that has happened, okay? And you were kind of, at that point, looking to special counsel Durham to do that. Where are we at with respect to Russiagate, Spygate, and, you know, Objective Medusa for that matter?  

Mr. Nunes: 

Well, we’re a long way, but it’s been painful to get there from where we began with this odyssey, essentially in late 2016 when this first came up, and, you know, had to fight through and expose major corruption within our government and really have changed the trajectory of history in many ways. You know, not because we ever wanted to do that, but because you had the Democrats controlling the intelligence agencies that essentially targeted a president, and that being, at the time, a candidate for president, then the president-elect, and then as president. And then I would go even further to say that they continued it even after he was president, all the way to the raid at Mar-a-Lago and all the Jack Smith nonsense.  

So through all this, there’s been a lot that’s been, you know, in terms of in 2025, a lot was put out of what I would say was kind of the final documents that had been hidden from the American people for so long. A lot of that was work that we had done in ‘17, ‘18, ‘19, and ‘20. When I say we, sorry, I’m putting my old hat on as the leader of the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee for so many years. We finally were able to get a report declassified and put out to the public, thanks to Director Gabbard, Director Ratcliffe, and the new Trump administration. This information came out that was really damning.  

And at the end of the day, I can just simplify it for the viewers. What it showed is what we suspected all the time. You never even needed any intelligence for this. But Putin, who was kind of at the center of this, loved Hillary Clinton, loved Obama. Why? Because he could boss them around and really didn’t want Trump at all because they figured he was, number one, unpredictable, but number two, didn’t think he was going to win because nobody back in 2016 thought that President Trump was going to win except for President Trump himself and a few people around him, including myself.  

But even I'll admit, I wasn’t sure he could win up until I think two or three weeks before the election. And that’s when I thought, wow, he is going to, he has a real chance to win here. This is going back to 2016. So the fact that all of this has been exposed now, there are reports out there that there are multiple investigations that are now ongoing. So kind of full stop here. We had our investigation, the phony Senate investigation.You had the Durham investigation that did expose a lot of things. You had Horowitz, who was the inspector general. You had his investigation.  

And now you have, I think, the new Trump administration truly trying to go through and look and run a thorough investigation, a full investigation. And now the big question that everybody asks is, well, is anybody going to be held accountable? The answer is we don’t know that because there are a lot of things at play here between corrupt courts, corrupt judges, corrupt states, blue states, jury pools, the statute of limitations. And I’m not a lawyer. Just have to deal with them all the time, Jan.  

But those are, at this point, I mean, from my perspective as a non-lawyer, what I'd be looking at is a grand conspiracy case that goes from 2015, 2016, all the way through at least to the raid at Mar-a-Lago. And why the raid at Mar-a-Lago? Just to bring this kind of back full circle, they raided Mar-a-Lago to get our document. The House Republican Intelligence Committee document is why they raided Mar-a-Lago. So it’s clear it’s corruption at the highest level; they had no evidence that that document was at Mar-a-Lago. 

The fact that they would do something that only happens in third-world countries where you essentially, you know, raid a former president’s house looking for something that you don’t even know whether or not it exists there, is high crime at the highest level. It’s just now, you know, how do you get that out to the masses and how do you hold people accountable? Do people go to jail? And that’s the big question. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

So just very, very quickly, you were a member of the Gang of Eight. So you were supposed to be briefed on the most sensitive intelligence around, basically, as far as I can tell. And you weren’t, especially when it came to judging that the presidential candidate was apparently a Russian asset, which is what was being touted around, right? I mean, I’m still thinking about it. And it’s so crazy that so many people bought into this.  

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes, it’s beyond crazy. It’s the biggest scandal in U.S. history by a long way, just because it involved the highest levels of everybody in government and our intelligence and military apparatus. So it’s, you know, I mean, we can go back and I think we did this in earlier interviews. But, you know, I get the question often, you know, how did you know that it was, you know, sorry, but how did you know it wasn’t true? I can say that now I’m not in Congress anymore, Jan, so I can say that, sorry.  

But there’s not a better term for it. What happened that you didn’t need an intelligence report for was that nobody ever thought Trump was going to win. Like I had said earlier, there’s no way Putin was going to be supporting Trump. It was preposterous. And in fact, when we were briefed right after the election, I called it the pre-Thanksgiving and post-Thanksgiving briefings.  

So after the election, before Thanksgiving, we get briefed. And this isn’t even getting eight. This is the full committee. And they give us this brief, FBI’s there and others, and say the election was fine. Everything was normal. There was nothing abnormal at all that happened. That was in November before Thanksgiving, 2016, president-elect Trump. Nothing was brought up. By the way, some of the people in that briefing were some of the worst characters.  

So they had an opportunity to say that they believed that Putin did something they didn’t. Then later, a few weeks later, the Senate gets a briefing and they get a different briefing that says, well, Putin might have had something involved. Well, now we know Obama himself, Susan Rice, all these characters ordered the intelligence report that we had received a couple weeks before. They basically said do not put that out. Go to the Senate. Do not say that. We’re going to do a whole new assessment. And so that’s where the corruption, where Obama and Team Obama got involved, was really there.  

We now know that they knew this was a Clinton DNC [Democratic National Committee] planned hoax with a bunch of other assets that they were running around the world, that they were paying like Fusion GPS and phony former British spies, just total joke what they were doing, and that was all they knew about that in August of 2016. Brennan and all those characters wanted to brief me as Gang of Eight in August of ‘16. They came and finally briefed me in September of ‘16. They essentially had an opportunity to tell me what Obama and all of them knew-that this was a DNC Clinton hoax.  

Instead, what they came and said is, oh, there might be some things going on in the election. Oh, well, tell me more. That doesn’t tell me anything. That’s not classified; there’s no intel in it. What’s going on that I should know about? You know nothing. You didn’t say anything when Brennan knew, Obama knew, they all knew in August. We get briefed after the election; no problem. Then Obama gets involved, interrupts, intercedes in an intelligence product that now Director Gabbard and others have made public, so we know.  

That is really criminal-to manipulate intelligence like that for political purposes. You know, it’s conspiracy. I mean, Clinton conspired with a bunch of bad actors in the FBI. You guys all know that story. They got everybody involved: Clapper, Brennan, and Comey all were actively involved in this phony intelligence product that was put out in January of 2017. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

The Steele dossier. 

Mr. Nunes: 

Well, the Steele dossier was involved in the whole thing. But the fact is, there’s just so much lying that occurred. It was the biggest scandal in U.S. history. So how did I know about it? Well, because the intelligence-I had all the intelligence. I had been on the intelligence committee for a decade or whatever by that time. I was supposed to be getting briefed. I mean, clearly, if Putin was doing something, I would have known-of all the people. And this is classic. You can’t even really script this better. You wouldn’t even think about how to script it.  

But in the spring of 2016, I actually took a very unprecedented step for that time because I very seldom would talk about the work on the intelligence committee, which I think is the right way to go. But I went out on fake news, Jake Tapper’s CNN show, and said that the largest intelligence failure since 9/11 in 2001 was the failure of the intelligence agencies to understand Putin’s plans and intentions. That’s in the spring of 2016.  

So at the same time, I was the one-the only one that was actually, I shouldn’t say the only, but one of the few that were raising red flags about what Putin was doing in Eastern Europe and around the world. The Obama administration loved Putin. They were giving Putin everything he wanted. Hillary Clinton, remember, had the big reset button that they pushed. I mean, you can’t make this up. And me, as chair of the Intelligence Committee in the spring of ‘16, said this is the biggest intelligence failure in 15 years at that same time and this. is why you can’t make it up. It’s only like for a movie script.  

At that same time, you have the FBI coordinating with the Democrats, basically framing the opposition candidate, the Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump, as a Russian asset. I mean, you can’t make this up. So fast forward a few months, and you come and tell me that, oh, Putin was behind this whole thing. Like, you guys don’t tell me about Putin because you didn’t want to know about Putin for the last decade. You let Putin shoot down planes, you know, do things in the country of Georgia, and other places around the world where he was messing around.  

Putin was not scared of you guys; he loved you guys. And so don’t blame us on a business guy out of New York that’s never been involved in politics, as if this was some grand scam, the grand conspiracy that they blame Trump for doing. They actually were doing it, and doing it in a very big way, bigger than we ever could imagine.  

Now that you see all this, it goes all the way to the raid at Mar-a-Lago. They did it, and they never stopped, and now they need to pay a price. So one is exposure. The harder part is prosecution, as we’re finding out, between the judges and the other corrupt officials and the juries. But look, it is what it is. We are where we are. You have to fight the war as it is, not the way you want it to be. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

Well, so it seems like, given everything you’ve just told me, it makes kind of perfect sense that you would be the chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. And I don’t, first of all, I don’t know if everyone knows this is what you’re doing. And the other thing is, I don’t know if a lot of people actually understand what this body is. And obviously, this is somehow connected with everything you just told me. So could you disambiguate this a bit for me, please? 

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes, I think the simple way to think about the Intelligence Board is it was started by Eisenhower after World War II when he was president. Eisenhower had a concern about the growing size of military intelligence with no oversight from the outside. So you had to have some oversight from people that had skills and background, but that were not reporting directly to the intelligence or military agencies. So he established the President’s Intelligence Board. It’s gone through different iterations over the years. There’s limited history on this because a lot of what they do is, you know, clandestine or classified.  

But if you look at the history during the Eisenhower years, I think it was very effective. Ronald Reagan, I think, used it very effectively. President Trump asked me to do this.Based on my background, we have really revolutionized the intelligence board, making it what President and former General Eisenhower wanted, which is to hold everybody accountable. It’s kind of twofold what we do.  

One is that we handle quick issues that almost have a quick reaction force-things that pop up where you need to put out fires quickly. It’s easy for us, with the talented board and team that we have, to decipher right from wrong, or at least give the president or the different secretaries the best advice that we can. So that’s kind of the first line of order of business.  

The second order is more long-term. I make it a point to tell our board and our team that, look, we’re not operational. We’re not big enough to be operational. Let Secretary Hegseth and all the others and Director Ratcliffe be operational. We don’t want to be on the operational front. We want to look out beyond the horizon and try to see problems before they arise and try to solve those problems or also solve some short- to medium-term problems. When I say solve, I mean that we’re trying to look, analyze, assess, and then give solid recommendations to either the president or anyone else, or all the above for that matter.  

So look, we’re not trying to be in the news. We’re not trying to be in the press. We’re just trying to do our job and do it really well. I think we have a great board and a great team of professionals that have a wealth of experience. Someday, I’m not going to tell you on this show, but maybe someday after President Trump is out of office and our board is long gone, maybe someday you'll find out about all the great things that we’re doing. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

So the one thing I wanted to ask is, does it have anything to do with Russiagate, what you’re doing?  

Mr. Nunes: 

What we’ve said is that we’ve been tasked by the president. Initially, when he asked me to do this role, he wanted the politicization out of the military and intelligence. Of course, wearing my former hat, I tried to do that myself. The way you do that is through transparency. We have been very vocal and very public about needing to get all documents related to the Russia hoax out for the public to see. As I said earlier, I believe that we’ve accomplished that this past year.  

The credit belongs to Director Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and others, and our good friend Kash Patel, who, by the way, knows where a lot of these bodies are buried since he was our lead investigator on this through the House Intelligence Committee. So we’ve moved a lot. We’ve moved fast, not fast enough for me or the president, but we’re moving as fast as we possibly can. And now it’s in the hands of the American public, and we'll see what happens with it. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

One final comment here. One of the things that we did with you back, probably about five years ago, is we did this little mini-doc called The Man Behind the Memo, and the memo was the Nunes memo which, you know, of course, I’m sure Kash had a big role in creating, not just you and the team and everything, but the Nunes memo has really withstood the test of time. It was just a very simple set of statements that, I mean, were like a nuclear bomb at the time, if I recall. The reason I’m mentioning this is that we really did know quite a number of the dimensions of this a long time ago, and what remained classified for years. I mean, you know so much, and somehow it never leaked. And I don’t even know how that is even possible, given the level of leaking that we’ve seen.  

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes, it’s number one. I'd have to go back and look at that; I have to watch that interview again. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

But, you know, it was the one where we went out and visited you in Visalia. 

Mr. Nunes: 

Oh, yes, out in California. Yes, I remember that. Yes, fond memories of that. So I would say this: that one, you know, I’m a rule follower. And, you know, to some degree, maybe that, you know, is something that maybe, you know, others wouldn’t have done. But, you know, look, follow the rules. I believe in the rule of law, and I’m going to follow the law.  

And, you know, remember what we did with that memo was unprecedented. We had to use the full extent of the authority of the United States Congress to release that publicly. We only put out the very basics. I mean, we knew so much more at the time. Most of what now has just come out, we knew a lot of that at the time, but part of that process was we didn’t have all the supporting documentation that we needed at that time when we put that memo out because we were still fighting the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, et cetera, for this information. And now, you know, we continue to do that. Obviously, Horowitz helped, Durham helped. All of that was really important. And, you know, now the memo would look much different than it does, than it did at the time.  

But look, the basics were out there when that memo was released. The bottom line is that it should have blown this Russiagate totally apart. People should have been immediately prosecuted. And I don’t mean Trump and the Trump administration. That memo should have gone and it should have immediately started an investigation into Mueller, Comey, you know, you name it, Rosenstein, that they should have all been prosecuted at that time. What did we find out? No, they actually just doubled and tripled down and ended up spying on us.  

I mean, you know, now that’s all come out now that we were investigating these phony investigators on this witch hunt, and they turned around and spied on us, the United States Congress at the time. And now, thankfully, because that happened back in 2017 and 2018 that a lot of people don’t know about, now Congress is finally waking up to this, that maybe this is a problem having these rogue DOJ and FBI and CIA that can actually now go spy on senators and congressmen. Now they’re all ticked off about it.  

It wasn’t that they ignored it at the time, but because it was, well, it was Nunes and he was, you know, really out there, you know, we didn’t know at the time what Trump had anything to do with Russia. So we kind of, you know, they kind of left me out there to the, you know, by myself, which is, you know, I’m a big boy. I can, you know, handle it and do handle it. But now, because so many of them, you know, they got away with spying on me and I would say Senator Grassley’s staff back in those days.  

But now they’ve done it to so many using the Jack Smith, once again, kind of the Mar-a-Lago Jack Smith investigation they went in and spied on a bunch of senators in Congress we don’t even know how many; I could be even more than what they even say today. And then, you know, kind of the follow-on point that, you know, that you would, when you look at this, would be that they also went after Trump Media’s bank records, okay, and this was all at that point, you know, they claimed it was because of January 6th.  

Well, as you know, we didn’t exist on January 6th of 2021. So why would you come after Trump Media and Technology Group’s bank records? So, you know, look, there’s more to say about that. You know, J.P. Morgan should have never allowed it. They did. The phone company should have never allowed this. You know, hopefully, I mean, I know there’s a DOJ investigation into all of this. The Florida AG, Attorney General Uthmeier has opened up an investigation into J.P. Morgan. So look, there’s more to that. We’re going to continue to follow that down.  

But look, it’s horrible to spy on congressmen and senators. I know, as one who got spied on. But to spy on a business that did not exist at the time of your supposed investigation on January 6th is preposterous and corrupt. Just that alone, people ought to go to jail. Just for that alone. Forget all the other stuff. So the fact that that happened is just wild and crazy. But no, look, now the senators are ticked off. The congressmen are ticked off. That’s great. I’m all for it. And welcome to the party, boys and girls.  

Mr. Jekielek: 

You know, one thing that I do remember from the very beginning, because this was something that really bothered you. You’re always very measured, okay? And then except when you started talking about the media. And I just remember you saying, because the media were in on it, Jan. They were in on it, right? And this was, I mean, this is part of what led you, I think, to Truth Social.  

You wrote a small monograph, or basically it was, I remember, a small book, really excellent on this kind of topic of problems with the media. And then you ended up early. I don’t think you got your congressional pension. I can’t remember how it all played out. But you just said, okay, the Truth Social needs me. I’m jumping in. I’m jumping in early. But it was because of this. And so as we finish this part here, just like the media role, how news legacy media is and has been in on it for a long time. 

Mr. Nunes: 

I think the profitability of these companies now has really, really added to that where, you know, it’s really tough for any media company to make a profit. I mean, it used to be a monopoly with just the three, you know, kind of the three big news, a couple of cable news, the major papers. It was before the advent of, you know, these phones and even the internet. So things have drastically changed and that’s added to the corruption. And so when I wrote that pamphlet, it was called Countdown to Socialism. It’s much like the Nunes memo. It was way worse than what I even imagined. And I imagined it could be really bad at the time.  

It predicted that the fake news was going to get worse and that the social media companies specifically were going to start banning and shadow banning people. And I never knew it was going to be millions and millions. And the president of the United States, the sitting president of the United States, members of Congress, it got really bad.  

So if you remember in those dark days when I was being shadow banned and banned, it became very hard to get the message out. I think if you didn’t have the fake news and legacy media, or the manipulation by the social media companies on, you know, on things that they didn’t want to appear with the algorithms and everything, we'd have a much different country today.  

But I was the first to join Rumble. Rumble was a company doing back-end videos for companies that wanted to try to challenge YouTube at the time. They had a little niche with funny animal videos that they were building their technology out with. And I joined Rumble, and it was me and funny animal videos. But for me, I didn’t care because it was the only way I could get my message out.  

And I had 8,000 followers on YouTube, which I didn’t know if that was a lot or not that many. But now we know it was not that many. And we know I was being shadow banned by YouTube because in a short amount of time in 2020, you know, within four months, I had 400,000 followers on Rumble, a platform that only people looking for funny animal videos and me would know about. So that’s what led me to this in 2020: this fight for free speech. 

I also was one of the first to join Parler, along with a guy named Dan Bongino, who you know or know of. And then Parler, I think, was still one of the worst things that happened in this country when roughly 30 US companies refused to work with Parler, which was just an upstart early-stage technology. It was a Twitter knockoff where I had already amassed a million followers or something on it in 2020. And you realize that by being on Rumble and Parler so early, it showed how many followers I would have had on Twitter and Facebook, had I not been banned like that. I mean, it’s just hard to imagine.  

So that’s me, my world, but then it started happening to everybody up to the president because of the ability of the algorithms with these social media companies working with the dark legacy media to essentially destroy the lives of so many people and the inability to get the messaging out so that the masses actually know what’s going on. I mean, we still deal with it today. So the only final point I would make on it is this: that I started this topic out with the legacy and fake news and their inability to make money, to make a profit. What’s happened is you take the Fusion GPSs of the world. Those have become the norm. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

So oppo research-type, opposition research firms. 

Mr. Nunes: 

But not only that. You have corporate clients and political clients paying these so-called journalists who are really just on the payroll of these companies, or whoever’s trying to manipulate the news. There are not too many. Even if you take a fake news company, what would be fascinating to know-and it’s not easy to find out, very hard-is how many of those, you know, are making, you know, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year as journalists. In places like New York City and Washington, DC, that’s not a lot of money. It used to be that you could be upper middle class or middle class if you’re a journalist. The law of economics shows that at some point, people are going to have to make money a different way.  

I think what’s actually happening here is that a lot of these journalists have second and third jobs, maybe multiple, where they’re on the payroll of someone who has an agenda. Whether it’s through direct payments that are 1099 or through cash or through other perks, we have seen some of these perks come out in the open. Journalism is dead outside. I think actually the irony in all this is that the so-called Right-wing media is actually the only media that has any ethics left.  

I’m not saying The Epoch Times is Right-wing, but you guys have truly been for the truth and for accuracy in journalism. I don’t want to start naming names, but Just the News with John Solomon, and the other great reporters that were out there that covered the Russia hoax; the Federalist, American Greatness, Breitbart—they’re the ones that actually have the highest ethical standards, and they’re very small operations that run as nonprofits.  

I just know that the problem is that the legacy media is hopelessly corrupt because of ideology, and they’re essentially for hire. You blend that together; it’s a dangerous concoction when they control-if you remember what I wrote about in Countdown to Socialism, it was about this funnel. You have all this information coming into the funnel; it’s like a disinformation funnel. By the time it gets to the person down below here in their brain, it’s unlikely that they’re going to see what The Epoch Times and this interview and things of that nature say.  

It’s very tough these days to make something go viral like what just happened recently with the Somali issue where you had a citizen journalist. I mean, that it’s hard to make that happen, to have a former vice presidential candidate running for reelection as governor of Minnesota drop out. Pretty spectacular. We haven’t seen that in a long time, and my guess is it’s a lot worse.  

But there are so many of these stories that are out there, that you know, from California water to all the problems in California, that you know where you essentially have a population, and I'll just close with this. You have a population that has elected Left-wing neo-Marxists over and over and over again. There are pockets, as you know, that I used to represent that still have some bastion of what I would say normalcy. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

And in California, just for the viewers that might not know what you’re talking about here.  

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes. So normalcy where you have people that think that having water for people is a good idea, that supporting farmers and growing food, and having cheap energy prices are good things for people, right? That shouldn’t be that controversial. But in California, just a year ago, you had parts of Los Angeles literally burned to the ground. They’re running out of water, they’re running out of electricity, and they have the highest gas prices by far in the United States, by a long, long way.  

And what’s the net result? You have what seems like common sense. Well, why would people keep voting for these people that keep doing this? Like, why would I want to? You know, San Francisco is being hollowed out where you’re seeing the tech sector moving to places like Florida and Texas. And yet, what do you see, Jan? You say, not only do we like it, we like it so much, we’re going to vote for more of these people. They’re voting for death and destruction.  

So to some degree, I do blame the neo-Marxists with the fake and phony legacy media, but it’s really the power-hungry Left controlling back to that funnel. They’re poisoning and have poisoned the minds because I can’t imagine there are not too many people you go up to on the street in California and say, oh, you got your power bill last month, and this happened. This is real money. In medium households in my former congressional district, now, it’s not uncommon to have a thousand to fifteen hundred dollar bill in a fifteen hundred square foot house for a month. That’s real money. It’s not uncommon. This is true.  

It’s not uncommon to see that you pay five to six dollars a gallon for gas. I just did it. I just did it last week. It’s not uncommon to see, literally, neighborhoods burned down. It just happened a year ago. Catastrophic forest fires. I mean, this is-people have been poisoned in California. So yes, what brought me to Truth Social, free speech, it’s all of these things. But we’re in a, California is in a very, very dark place. And so is New York City.  

Look, I’m just happy to be at a place, Truth Social. Thank God the president went and built this because we built something globally, our own technology. Nobody can cancel us. We can now, not only do we have Truth Social, but we also have the streaming component that we have, where you can actually watch some of The Epoch Times-related videos and channels. It’s absolutely astonishing what has happened here. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

Well, okay. So let me mention a few things before I continue. One is that the funnel is highly memorable. It’s a very evocative graphic. We’re going to put it up here. The second thing is there is one bias-rating company called AllSides, which I kind of trust. What they do is they take the content and strip away all the branding and show it to people, right? And then people decide just based on what the content is, not based on what they’re supposed to think the content is, okay? And so we land typically sort of center to lean right, right? Which I think is fair. I mean, truth and tradition is our maxim, right? So, you know, I'll take it.  

And finally, my thought here is this. I mean, basically, at Truth Social, our sister media, NTD, is on Truth+. It’s actually extremely helpful because I'll watch something, and usually the volume isn’t up, but I want to catch it later. And Truth Social allows that. Truth+ allows that. I can go back to the episode very quickly and get it. So I’m actually a regular user of the service. I appreciate that. 

Mr. Nunes: 

Thank you. It is amazing technology. And look, we’re still building this out. But Truth+, for those of you who haven’t used it, is amazing technology. I think it’s really the best out there. I mean, the only thing that would be comparable would be YouTube TV, but for, you know, we’ve given a home to channels that didn’t have a home that can’t get onto YouTube TV or anywhere else, but it also happens to be the best technology, especially as fast as it is. You have seven-day playback.  

So if you miss an interview on one of the new shows, you can go back a week and bring it up. You don’t have to save it. You could just go back. It’s really simple. I mean, it’s really good on your phone or your iPad, but also very, very good on your television. It works amazingly. I mean, look, the folks that we’ve put together here, the team that we have at Trump Media and Technology Group is, I think nobody-they first made fun of us, said that we could never do it, said that we'd have to use all the big tech.  

Now, one thing they can’t do is say that we, knock, you know, we’re open globally to do, to be a home for free speech for not just social media, but also for channels that can’t get a home. But no, it’s amazing what we’ve accomplished in really a short amount of time, having to do this all ourselves with our own patented proprietary technology. And obviously having President Trump, it’s his home. And that made a big difference because it allowed us to test the technology. So we were building as we go. We’re still building as we go.  

Thank you for bringing up that technology because a lot of people know Truth Social. They don’t know Truth+, but when you have Truth Social, there’s just a toggle that you can push on Truth Social, and it'll take you to our sister app, and the apps kind of work together, but it’s amazing technology. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

Well, I can tell you, I know what an extraordinary achievement it is. We’ve had to build the bulk of our own tech stack for a whole bunch of reasons. We decided to do that and to get it good and to get it optimized and to get it at the scale you guys are operating. I mean, it’s quite a huge achievement to have done that end to end. You guys are clearly looking at some massive data center growth, or you’re predicting it or something like this because you’ve gone out and merged with a fusion generation company. It’s one of the most promising, I think, in America.  

What are you doing here? You’re just betting you’re going to be using a ton of energy, or you’re actually looking to build fusion reactors all over the place? What is the plan here? People were surprised, I think, when they saw this, although it’s not necessarily that unusual given the expectations of these massive data centers that everyone’s apparently going to have. 

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes, I think that’s right. So let’s just go into the company. So everybody knows us for free speech, and we save free speech on this planet, and you know we give credit where credit’s due. Elon also helped by buying Twitter and turning it into X. But what’s happened is that now AI has really come up; it’s really growing quickly, and it’s now like when you think of us as the tip of the spear, we’re the tip of the spear in fighting for freedom of speech.  

Now, we’re at the tip of the spear because the most important issue- you can have all the technology you want, all the AI, all the data centers- but there’s a problem. There’s not enough power, right? So there’s not enough power to power these data centers so much. So you have really stupid, naive elected officials.  

I think actually they’re not naive; they know what they’re doing-who are saying, well, we shouldn’t have data centers; put them somewhere else, because they know their anti-energy policies and this need for power is going to raise the price of energy. So it lets Newsom and the guys in California say, oh, this is not us; it’s these data centers. Don’t look at us. So they shift. They shift lanes. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

Devin, if I can jump in just for one sec. I was at a roundtable; I was invited to a roundtable around energy. And we had, you know, all sorts of different people-green, not green. It was quite a diverse group. And everyone’s talking, and it just dawned on me at one point- all they’re talking about is precisely what you just said. They’re talking about how we’re not going to have enough energy. We’re not going to have enough energy to run all these data centers. Literally, everybody was saying this.  

And I asked this; I go, hey, is net zero dead? Have we just forgotten? Because before, we were talking about how to reduce energy consumption massively. I mean, this was the topic, right? And all of a sudden, literally everybody, wall to wall, is talking about how do we get enough power? There’s not enough power. And then a couple of days later, we have Bill Gates saying, well, maybe the global warming whole thing, maybe that’s a little bit extreme the way it’s been portrayed. So anyway, it’s just fascinating, right? It’s just like this narrative shift at the drop of a hat. Did you notice this?  

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes absolutely. A lot of people ask, you know, how did you get involved in energy issues? Well, especially nuclear power. So I was early on in my career; I spent a lot of time on these energy issues, especially nuclear. So I had actually introduced legislation that would have allowed for the construction of an additional 200 reactors of traditional nuclear fission, and we'll get to that-reactors. Those, of course, never got built. Fukushima happened. That really took the wind out of the sails of nuclear power.  

But now you’re exactly right. All these tech gurus that are all global warming freaks have now switched over and said, well, wait a second, our billions and billions of dollars that we want to make now rely on energy. They didn’t care when it was the farmer out there with the tractor or the manufacturing plant somewhere in the Midwest. You’re out in California, oh yes, global warming, buy our solar panels and our windmills. And we’re all a new economy. We’re going to make billions and we’re going to show you how to make things more efficient.  

Yes, you’re right, Jan. It’s a narrative shift that all went out the window because now, like agriculture and other industries that actually make things that matter in this world, now all the yuppies and the tech freaks are all of a sudden saying all this stuff that they were saying was nonsense. They have invented something now with these new massive needs of this AI power, and so they now have to jump in and say, oh, we’ve always been for nuclear. Yes, we really wanted to do nuclear.  

So anyway, you’re 100 percent right. But what we told the market was when we, you know, we obviously the mission of our company was, say, free speech. But we’re a technology company and we’ve proven that we can build very complicated technology. We started looking around at, well, what’s still at the tip of the spear? What does this country need to compete globally? Every company, especially every technology company, is in the energy sector one way or another.  

In fact, the irony of this, one of the larger investors in TAE Technologies, they have been around privately funded for nearly 30 years looking at nuclear fusion, not fission. But Google is one of their larger investors. Other energy companies like Chevron, major investors like Stanley Druckenmiller, they’ve all invested privately into TAE. 

So when we started looking at the energy sector, knowing that this is the most important issue now at the highest level, where can we as Trump Media and Technology Group get involved? We analyzed that sector. We put together a huge war chest, as you know, of Bitcoin assets. And so we’ve been kind of cutting edge there, trying to figure out how to use crypto on True Social and Truth+. But we looked at where we best make these investments.  

And we looked hard at the energy sector and then kind of drew upon my former experience being a big supporter of nuclear power. I always thought that fusion was maybe just too far out. But now I believe, once looking at, there’s not very many fusion companies, but then looking at TAE where they’ve built five, you know, five generations now of reactors. They’re now ready to build a sixth and will be the first in the world to actually have a reactor where you get more energy out than what you put in.  

So we just released plans for a site; we put out the site criteria this week. The first commercial reactor would be about 50 megawatts, but the second reactor that we hope will be on the same site would be somewhere in the 350 to 500 megawatt range. What does this mean to the common viewer out there that’s watching this?  

If you think of the big nuclear fusion reactors, they are around a thousand megawatts. Most of the coal or gas plants are in that 200 to 500 range. So, you know, TAE is working with us to build these reactors-obviously, this has never been done before-so there’s a lot to be done. But I call it Manhattan Project 2.0, building off of what was done in the first Manhattan Project that led to atomic power. This work is essentially clean, cheap power that everybody prospers from by having clean, cheap power. 

We’re going in the opposite direction. So you can have all the AI, all the technology you want, but if you don’t have the power, it doesn’t matter. And so we’ve got to get the cost of power down for all Americans. By the way, I’m not saying this is- even if we’re successful to our fullest extent possible-it’s still going to be a long time before you can build enough of these. So you’re going to need oil, gas, everything, you know, the existing nuclear fission. I do believe that nuclear fusion is the answer; it long has been the answer. It’s just that, you know, there hasn’t been a solution yet. 

It’s not like this is new science; this was known by people, you know, back during the World War II time frame. But it’s just being able to contain the plasma in order to produce the electricity that’s been the problem. So we’re very optimistic about this technology. And this will bring it home for you and the folks at The Epoch Times, because I know you follow China closely. People ask me, well, who are your competitors? Is it Bill Gates? Is it Elon Musk who wants to put solar panels… 

Mr. Jekielek: 

That’s right, up in space, right? 

Mr. Nunes: 

Solar panels in space, but data centers in space, which, by the way, we’re probably going to need to do that too. But, you know, people talk about having the smaller modular reactors like the ones that we have in the naval vessels. All of that is going to be necessary. But the true breakthrough would be having these 350 to 500 megawatt plants. So, who’s the competition?  

The only competition in my mind for this company, for our future company, is China. That’s it. The Chinese have put untold billions into this, and they know that it’s now going to be possible to create, to have a nuclear fusion reactor that works. And that’s what we’re up against. We’re really racing against the clock, against China.  

I know we solved the free speech problem, and now we’re moving on to solve the energy problem and make sure that our country maintains global dominance by not only being energy independent but driving prices of energy down for the people in the United States. That’s a goal that I’ve had, ironically, like I said, for a long time. And now we’re in a position to make it happen. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

A couple of questions. First one, one thing that the Chinese Communist Party is particularly good at is hacking and stealing sensitive technologies and intelligence. So, how are you dealing with this particular reality, given that you’re asserting here that they’re your only competitor? I would say that there’s a high-risk margin here on this one. 

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes, look, up to this point, a lot of this has been science projects, large ones. And a lot of this information has been shared globally so that it’s out there. The difference with TAE, a lot of this is patented technology. It’s a different way of going about the fusion process, I believe, just from what I read. Now, it’s fake news, legacy media, so you never know. I actually saw some that were not fake news that talked about it. But the Chinese know containing the plasma using lasers is really the, you know, would be the amazing discovery.  

We believe that we can use boron, which is readily available. So if we could use boron in these reactors, you wouldn’t use much of it. There is essentially no radioactive material whatsoever. And another way to think about it with these fusion reactors is they’re more like, and permitted as such, like an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] machine, like what you use in health care. And that’s why, you know, when we say, look, we only need 20 acres to build the first three reactors when we released our site criteria. 

I know that doesn’t really answer your kind of question on China. But, you know, I would just say that, you know, having myself and our team that we’ve assembled here, we know how to keep secrets. I think we will be a big benefit to TAE in making sure that that security is in place. But look, they’ve done a pretty good job. They have a lot of proprietary technology that so far nobody else has that we are obviously very fond of and obviously want to keep it out of everybody’s hands, not just the Chinese. We need to get this, make this work, and start producing cheap, abundant, clean, safe power.  

Mr. Jekielek: 

Well, you know, I think we’ve come full circle here, because you indeed were very good at making sure that none of that classified information got out until it could be gotten out via the official channels. So I’m hearing you when you say you know how to keep secrets. I just hope you have the next level of tech expertise to defend against these obvious cyber attacks. I mean, we experience them ourselves constantly, right? They just don’t, like, I mean, in our case, they just want to take us down, right? They’re not looking to, I don’t think they’re looking to steal the secrets necessarily. 

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes, you’re exactly right, but if anybody can do it, it’s going to be us. I mean, look, there’s always going to be cyber attacks; you know we get them too. But at the end of the day, you know, we’ve managed to keep True Social and Truth+, you know, up and going, despite all the bad actors that want to take us down for one reason or another. But, you know, our beautiful company here has done a lot for America, a lot for the world, and we’re going to continue to make that happen. And this is, like I said, this has been a dream of mine and many people for a long, long time to do something that’s at the heart. You know, you can say freedom of speech is at the heart of everything, but, you know, power is also cheap. Abundant power is so important to mankind.  

Mr. Jekielek: 

And just one little thing here. How does it actually generate these? Is it a similar situation to fission where you’re actually heating something using the nuclear reaction and then that drives a turbine and creates the electricity? Is it the same method?  

Mr. Nunes: 

Yes. At the end of the day, you have to produce for all these, whether it’s gas or oil, what you’re doing is you’re creating heat, and then you have to harness that heat. This is such advanced technology that, I mean, there’s, I mean, you could use it. I think the plan now is, and obviously this is all subject to change as you start to build the first commercial reactor, and once you build the first one, you'll likely innovate, and the second one will be different.  

But the current trajectory is to make heat and turn a turbine, That’s the plan. You can watch it at TAE.com. I mean, they actually talk about this in some of the videos that they have there. You know, they do believe there are some other opportunities where you could almost do direct power. Go to TAE.com. You'll see all about it.  

Obviously, we’re Trump Media and Technology Group. DJT is the ticker symbol. But we haven’t been standing still or doing nothing. We’ve been working on some really big projects. And I know that The Epoch Times has been behind us 110 percent. We appreciate that and all your viewers, Jan. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

It just struck me that, in a way, we’ve kind of taken sort of the inverse path. Since we were founded in 2000 to expose the true narrative around communist China, not this Kissinger Doctrine thing where we were supposed to pump in the cash and they were going to liberalize. That was never going to happen. We knew that, but it was hard to convince people. But the point was they were trying to destroy us all along.  

So when American media started attacking us, I think it really started with NBC in 2018, we were horrified, right, that this was happening. At the same time, we had a lot of experience dealing with it in various ways because we’ve had to deal with the CCP. You guys are kind of the opposite, right? You know, you’ve been having to deal with kind of, well, let’s say, you know, people, Americans that don’t like you, but now you’ve graduated to the CCP being very interested in you. So congratulations.  

Mr. Nunes: 

Well, thank you. And we'll continue to fight the good fight here. And I appreciate everything that The Epoch Times has done to try to just be a source of real news and information.  

Mr. Jekielek: 

So this has been an incredible conversation. A final quick thought as we finish?  

Mr. Nunes: 

To do things like this takes a lot of great people. You know, we have a great company with a great shareholder base. You have committed people not only at Trump Media and Technology who have solved this free speech issue, but we’ve got a, you know, the team at TAE is some of the most awarded scientists and engineers in the world. And this is American technology. And, you know, it’s going to take that type of ingenuity to get something like this done. The first Manhattan Project, like we talked about, led to that atomic power. Good or bad, like there are obviously challenges with nuclear fission.  

But we put the pause button as a country, the United States, on those types of fission reactors. The Chinese did not. The Chinese continued to build coal plants. They continued to build large atomic generation fission plants. And now we’re playing catch up. And so, join us and be involved and help America stay on top. That’s what our company is about. 

Mr. Jekielek: 

Well, as I think you know, I’m a huge American exceptionalist despite being Canadian. It’s unfortunately a bit rare, especially these days. I wish you Godspeed, and it’s such a pleasure to have had you on.  

Mr. Nunes: 

Thanks a lot, Jan. Great to be with you, as always. 

This interview has been partially edited for clarity and brevity.