Former dairy farmer and current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes must really love wine a hell of a lot.
No, we aren’t referring to the $40,000 in PAC contributions from wine, beer, and liquor lobbyists that the California representative received in 2016. We’re talking about the fact that almost the entirety of Nunes’ disclosed net worth—$50,001 out of his total declared net worth of $51,000—is invested in an obscure Napa winery called Alpha Omega Winery. And if that weren’t strange enough, some are now claiming that the investment is tangible proof of Nunes’ ties to the Russian government.
Videos by VICE
But is it?
Nunes, of course, is the Republican US Representative from California who is in charge of the investigation into possible Russian interference with and collusion in Trump’s presidential campaign. Over the past week, many have called for Nunes to recuse himself from leading the investigation on multiple grounds: he was a member of the Trump transition team, he ostensibly leaked classified information about the investigation on TV, and he had a secret meeting on White House grounds.
Is Nunes’ investment in Alpha Omega additional grounds to call for his recusal?
Here’s what critics of Nunes are saying: The Napa-based winery had, in the past, posted on its website that Luding Trading Company, a major Russian alcohol distributor, was its distribution outlet in Russia. But since Nunes’ investment in the winery was made public, Alpha Omega appears to have suddenly removed Luding from a page on its website listing its distributors. Additionally, the winery tweeted last week that its sole business interaction in Russia was a one-time sale of 22 cases of wine to an unnamed broker back in 2013.
READ MORE: One of Trump’s Key National Security Advisors Is a Prolific Wine Blogger
Why would the winery go so far as to disavow its Russian connections? Is it because Luding calls itself “Russia’s largest trading company specializing in alcoholic beverages” and was granted a license by the Presidential Property Management Department of the Russian Federation to launch their own KREMLIN AWARD cognac using the government owned “Kremlin” (Kremlevsky) brand back in 2010?
At the time, Luding stated that the licensing agreement would mean that their KREMLIN AWARD cognac would be served at “official social events of the higher bodies of state authority.” Interestingly, only four days before Luding made that deal in December of 2010, the company’s co-founder, Ara Khachatryan, was found murdered in his car.
And here’s where things go down the rabbit hole, fast.
Luding, to this day, lists Alpha Omega as a supplier on its website. In fact, Luding’s website lists for sale a 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, a 2010 proprietary red, and a 2012 unoaked Chardonnay, all from Alpha Omega Winery. This seems to contradict the claim made in the winery’s recent tweet.
An article on Occupy Democrats posits that the unoaked Chardonnay from 2012 is, in fact, a smoking gun, because it was “surely still sitting in a barrel waiting to be bottled when the 2013 transaction allegedly took place.” At first glance, that certainly might seem like a discrepancy that would disprove Alpha Omega’s Twitter assertion, or at least warrant skepticism, but one of the winery’s trade and media presentations states that their 2012 unoaked Chardonnay was only aged for four months, while another contradicting PDF states it was aged for six months. Discrepancy aside, hurriedly aging your wine is clearly not proof of a Machiavellian cover-up.
Others, like the blog Addicting Info, have taken notice of the fact that Alpha Omega Winery doesn’t have distributors in a single European NATO member and that aside from Russia, Switzerland is the only country they distribute to in all of Europe.
Does all of this prove that the winery in which Nunes invests is somehow dancing to the beat of the Kremlin’s drummers—or is all of this nothing more than partisan histrionics?
READ MORE: Now, a Supermarket Chain Faces a Boycott for Selling Trump Wine
Jack Langer, Nunes’ director of communications, provided MUNCHIES with the following statement when asked about the Alpha Omega investment: “Chairman Nunes has advocated more sanctions on Russia, providing arms to Ukraine, diplomatically isolating Russia, resurrecting the Central European missile defense shield, and implementing a large-scale anti-Putin public communications strategy. A year ago, he declared the failure to predict Putin’s plans and intentions to be America’s biggest intelligence failure since 9/11. The notion that one of Congress’ most prominent Russia hawks is actually a secret Putin sympathizer because he’s a limited partner, with no management role whatsoever, in a small California winery that sold some wine in Russia, is a laughable smear job.”
A spokesperson for Alpha Omega Winery responded to MUNCHIES’ request with the following: “Representative Devin Nunes is one of a few friends Alpha Omega managing partner Robin Baggett invited to invest in the winery in 2005. None of the investors has ever been involved with the management of the company. Robin is the sole managing partner and ultimate decision maker at Alpha Omega. Robin has made a point to never mix politics with the business of Alpha Omega. Our business model is simple: grow great grapes, make great wine, hire great people and provide our customers with a great experience. The only time Alpha Omega did business in Russia was in 2013 when a broker handled a one-time transaction for 22 cases of wine. We frequently update our website. I cannot speak for how often Luding updates its website, but listing our wine on its site does not mean we did business with them other than the one time in 2013.”
MUNCHIES has reached out to Luding for comment, but has yet to hear back.
Nefarious Russian ties or is it simply an innocent investment in a friend’s winery? The answer to that question remains to be seen.
