Dyed-in-the-wool Texas conservative Michael Conaway expects a short tenure as the leader of the House investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and related allegations. Better known as Agriculture Committee chairman, Conaway, a CPA by training and a lower-level member of House Republican leadership, said he will be objective and methodical in running the Intelligence Committee probe.
An Agriculture Committee spokeswoman said the new Intelligence Committee duties “will not impact the House Agriculture Committee’s activities or the chairman’s anticipated timeline for writing and passing a new farm bill,” due by fall 2018. The committee has a heavy schedule of information-gathering hearings under way and Conaway has said he wants to reform the food stamp program. Drafting of the bill would take place next year.
Now in his seventh term, Conaway, the second-ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, was tabbed to take over the investigation while Chairman Devin Nunes resolves ethics complaints about his handling of classified material. Conaway serves on the House Armed Services Committee along with Agriculture and Intelligence.
“I must emphasize that this is a temporary position,” said Conaway, after Nunes announced he was stepping aside from the probe. “I am confident these charges (against Nunes) levied by outside activists will be proven false.”
Conaway said he believed that he and the senior Democrat on Intelligence, Adam Schiff of California, “will be able to work together to conduct an effective, bipartisan investigation.” Schiff said the change in command of the investigation was an opportunity for a fresh start.
With the elevation to leadership of the Russia investigation, Conaway will be under the most intense public scrutiny of his career. A social, fiscal and religious conservative, Conaway is a deputy Republican whip with a hard-edged belief in pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. He often recounts a childhood in which his father moved the family frequently to follow jobs around the Texas oil fields, using it as an object lesson in self-reliance rather than acceptance of social assistance.
En route to Florida to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump told reporters that Conaway was “a highly-respected man” and “high-quality” but he has not met him.
But a Democratic research group scored him for dismissive comments in January about Russian hackers and attempts to sway the U.S. election, said the Dallas Morning News. “Conaway is a partisan hack just like Rep. Nunes,” said Jessica Mackler of the group, American Bridge.
“Conaway has handled sensitive assignments before as a former chairman of the House Ethics Committee, which investigates allegations of wrongdoing against members of Congress, generally considered one of the most thankless jobs in Washington,” said the Houston Chronicle.
A native Texan, Conaway served in the Army and then worked for an accounting company, settling in Midland. The brief biography on his House website says Conaway later worked “with George W. Bush as the chief financial officer for Bush Exploration. He developed a lasting friendship with President Bush as they learned together what it takes to run a business.”