Should Special Counsel Robert Mueller bring charges against Donald Trump and members of his inner circle for a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation, he should include Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for his direct coordination with the White House and the conservative media entertainment complex in manufacturing conspiracy theories with which to discredit the FBI, to misdirect the House Intelligence Committee from its Russia investigation, and to obstruct the Special Counsel investigation into his “Dear Leader,” Donald Trump.
Rep. Nunes is back in the news again with a unified theory of the several conspiracy theories he and the Trump White House have manufactured over the past year in a “memo” he has prepared, reportedly based on highly classified information, over which the conservative media entertainment complex are all frothing at the mouth accusing the FBI of criminal misconduct in order to target their “Dear Leader” with the Russia investigation.
POLITICO reports, House Republicans clash over secret memo:
House Republicans are sharply divided over how to handle a classified memo that President Donald Trump’s allies say contains explosive details of misconduct by senior FBI and Justice Department officials.
The memo, compiled by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes and fellow Republicans on the panel, claims that senior federal officials abused a secret surveillance program, commonly known as FISA, to target the Trump campaign. It also alleges other federal law enforcement wrongdoing that some Republicans insist should lead to the firings of senior officials.
But while several Republicans have publicly cited the document as cause for alarm—triggering an aggressive Twitter campaign that has featured dozens of supportive tweets by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.—they have not detailed its specific allegations.
That has prompted Democrats to allege a smear campaign. The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, calls the memo a misleading ploy to discredit federal probes into 2016 Russian election meddling and ties between Trump associates and the Kremlin.
“It’s designed to push out a destructive narrative and further the attacks on the FBI. It’s basically a burn-the-house down strategy to protect the president,” he said.
The memo, according to three people who have viewed it, raises questions about how the FBI handled a fall 2016 application for a warrant to surveil a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, and whether agents were forthcoming about the role a controversial dossier alleging Kremlin influence over Trump played in their decision to seek the warrant.
The dossier was compiled in 2016 by former British spy Christopher Steele, a trusted FBI partner in previous investigations, who had been commissioned by the private research firm Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s business ties to Russia. Fusion’s work was funded at that time by a lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. It’s unclear if Steele’s relationship to the campaign was disclosed in the FISA application.
The main debate in the House centered not around the memo’s secret allegations, but whether the classified document can be publicly released without compromising FBI sources and methods.
“You don’t want the enemy to know that,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), an intelligence committee member who supports allowing his colleagues — but not the public — to see the full document. “This is not to protect the guilty. It’s to protect the innocent.”
Other members of the panel were similarly cautious. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), said that releasing the complete memo would be “dangerous.” Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said he’d only be comfortable if a “scrubbed” or “unclassified” version of the memo were released. And King said he’d support a “redacted” version of the report to inform the public of their findings.
But several of the president’s top congressional allies—who were already harsh critics of the FBI and the Justice Department—described the memo’s findings in dire terms and said it was urgent to reveal to Americans.
“I think that this will not end just with firings. I believe there are people who will go to jail,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in an interview on Fox News.
“I no longer hold out hope there is an innocent explanation for the information the public has seen. I have long said it is worse than Watergate,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).
Several GOP lawmakers came close to describing the memo’s classified contents Friday, saying it describes purported abuses of the FISA—or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—program by Obama administration officials, mishandling of a tool to “unmask” the identities Americans swept up in intercepts and mishandling of a disputed dossier that alleged criminal ties between Trump and Russia.
Nunes and other Republicans have previously alleged that Obama officials wrongfully unmasked Trump associates for political reasons, though they haven’t substantiated those claims. Obama officials insist they did nothing wrong.
The House GOP push has spawned a trending hashtag on Twitter, #releasethememo that conservative media hyped throughout the day Friday.
By Friday evening, Trump Jr., had tweeted about the memo 37 times since the previous day. Fox News host Sean Hannity opened his Thursday night prime-time show with a discussion of the still-secret memo, which he treated as a bombshell that could lead to the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion and potential obstruction of justice by the president or his allies.
There appeared to be darker elements at work as well. Business Insider reported that the hashtag assigned to the memo debate has been fueled by Twitter accounts linked to Kremlin propaganda. Wikileaks, the website run by Julian Assange that intelligence officials say was complicit in the Kremlin’s 2016 interference campaign, has offered a $1 million reward for a leaked copy of the memo.
So the coordination between Russian intelligence propaganda and the American conservative media entertainment complex during te 2016 campaign continues to this day with the cover-up and obstruction of justice. It is probably too much to hope that the Special Counsel will take down FAUX News (aka Trump TV) for its role in disseminating Russian propaganda and for manufacturing conspiracy theories with which to discredit the FBI and to obstruct the Special Counsel investigation into their “Dear Leader,” Donald Trump.
In an instance of strange bedfellows, Republicans also picked up support from the ACLU and the former NSA contractor-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden. Both tweeted support for releasing the memo, saying that it could inform a debate about Congress’s reauthorization of government surveillance powers contained in the FISA law. (Congress has since passed the measure, which Trump signed into law Friday.)
Conservative lawmakers hope the furor will help pressure House Speaker Paul Ryan to invoke a little-known House process that allows the public disclosure of a classified document.
Ryan declined to respond to a shouted question Friday on whether he’d read the memo, and a source familiar with his discussion with conservatives on Thursday said he deferred questions about the document’s release to Nunes.
Nunes hasn’t indicated whether he’ll call for a vote, and he appeared to be waiting for more members of the House to review the text.
Asked about lawmakers who have described the contents of the memo, King said lawmakers have to “be careful what you say” since the substance remains classified. In fact, he said, that discussion was at the heart of internal discussions by the intelligence committee about whether to release the memo at all.
“It was enough of a fight to get this out” to Congress, he said. “It was a pretty heated debate.”
One senior GOP senator, asked about his House colleagues’ alarm over the memo’s contents, sounded a more cautious line.
As he emerged from the House’s secure meeting room Friday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) declined to say whether he’d actually seen the document. But when asked about the characterization by some rank-and-file Republicans that the memo’s contents are “shocking,” Cornyn replied: “I think there’s a lot of paranoia around here when it comes to that topic.”
The lawmakers calling for a the release of the document have pointed to an obscure House rule that permits the intelligence committee to release classified information deemed to be in the public interest.
Under that process, the committee must notify Trump, who would have five days to decide whether to object. If he does, the committee may refer the matter to the full House, which would then meet in a “closed” session, out of public view, to debate and vote on the request.
Other than Schiff, Democrats have said little about the GOP memo, though it was unclear how many had viewed the document by Friday afternoon.
Schiff said he opposes the report’s release because the public would not be able to see highly classified source material on which the report is based, which he said would help identify “distortions” and inaccuracies.
Republicans, Schiff said, are “doing their best to tear apart the FBI to protect the president and I think it’s a terrible disservice to the country.”
A broader group of House intelligence committee Democrats called the concise memo—which they dismissed as “talking points”—an intentional attempt to mislead lawmakers because they’ll never see the underlying documents that Republicans used to form their analysis.
“The documents that supposedly inform these talking points are highly classified,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. “And they will not be made public, making it impossible for the few Members who have seen the documents to explain the flaws and misstatements contained within the talking points without disclosing our most closely held intelligence sources and methods. This is by design.”
Evil GOP bastards!
Betsy Woodruff reports at The Daily Beast, #ReleaseTheMemo? Source Says ‘Only A Matter Of Time’:
House Republicans are moving in the direction of releasing a controversial memo produced by Rep. Devin Nunes and the majority staff of the House intelligence committee.
Nothing is close to being finalized, and the memo’s release is far from guaranteed. But a House Republican leadership aide told The Daily Beast that its release is very likely.
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said.
* * *
Nunes’ staff wrote the memo based on top secret intelligence that the FBI showed to a tiny number representatives and staff. Nunes and Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, are among the members who have seen that intelligence.
Unsurprisingly, Nunes and Schiff hold diametrically different views as to what that underlying intelligence means. Nunes and his team say it is evidence of grave abuses by the intelligence community; Schiff and the other Democrats on the committee released a statement calling it “a misleading set of talking points attacking the FBI.”
Democrats said the memo is designed to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into connections between Trump allies and the Kremlin. They also said that because members cannot see the underlying intelligence, they cannot fairly assess whether or not the memo characterizes it correctly.
Any efforts for Schiff and his staff to release a counter-memo would almost certainly be stymied; such a release would require a vote of by House intelligence committee, which is deeply divided along partisan lines.
* * *
Not all Republicans want the memo released. One powerful House Republican, who spoke anonymously, told The Daily Beast that he found its contents concerning but did not believe they should be public.
So what we have here are Tea-Publican members of Congress who are accessories to a conspiracy to aid and abet a cover-up and to obstruct justice. They should all face justice.
UPDATE: Betsy Woodruff updates her reporting, FBI: Devin Nunes Won’t Show Us Memo Alleging Surveillance Abuses:
The FBI has not been permitted to see the memo Rep. Devin Nunes and his staff wrote about alleged abuses by the intelligence community, The Daily Beast has learned.
“The FBI has requested to receive a copy of the memo in order to evaluate the information and take appropriate steps if necessary. To date, the request has been declined,” said Andrew Ames, a spokesperson for the FBI.
The fact that Republicans refuse to show the memo to FBI, which characterizes the intelligence they shared with Nunes, has Democrats concerned. One aide told The Daily Beast it means Nunes’ efforts are just politics.
“If this is about FBI abuses, why wouldn’t they share it with the Trump-appointed director who wasn’t at the bureau when the abuses supposedly occurred?” the aide said. “If this is about cleaning up the FBI like they claim, wouldn’t they want Wray as an ally?”
That aide added that making the memo public without letting the FBI see it first could exacerbate tensions between the Hill and the bureau, and that it could make it even less cooperative with Congressional requests and subpoenas.
The GOP-controled House intelligence committee decided against letting Democrats release a minority report characterizing the classified intelligence underlying the Nunes memo.
It is misleading for Politico to state,
“But while several Republicans have publicly cited the document as cause for alarm—triggering an aggressive Twitter campaign that has featured dozens of supportive tweets by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.—they have not detailed its specific allegations.”
…when they know the document is classified and anyone who discloses its details before it is declassified commits a crime.
The memo is a con. And something being classified never stopped Trump before, remember when he “shared” Israeli intel with the Russian’s he invited into he Oval Office?
This is no different than when Trump said he had people in Hawaii looking into Obama’s birth and they were finding “many interesting things”.
There were no things, were there?
The Birther King and President of Trump University is a con man who lies 6 times a day on average and cheats on his wives, then pays off the porn stars he sleeps with, and we’ll all remember that this is the man you support.
No, it would be misleading not to include the caveat. It is also clear the some Republicans are talking to reporters about what is in the memo, just not on the record.
I always feel the need to shower after reading Junior’s twitter feed, I can assure you DJTJ has not seen the memo.
DJT Jr does not have security clearance. He’s just tweeting out Matt Gaetz claims, and Gaetz is one of the least credible GOP’ers to ever slither out of a Florida swamp.
Trump can declassify whatever he wants anytime he wants, the memo is a scam.
The GOP should release the memo or STFU.
He needs to be the subject of an investigation, not running one. Just another Trump & party over country dirtbag. May his career wind up in the fertilizer of his family farms’ fields.
Nunes is a Russian stooge. He jumps from cars in the middle of the night and runs around DC trying to find ways to cover his ass.
If there’s a “memo” or other information the clears Trump, well, Trump is POTUS and can release any information he wants.
By claiming there’s damning information in a memo that never gets released, it allows the right wing nut-o-sphere to invent all sorts of conspiracy theories, which weak minded Trumpaloompa’s will eat up.
Release the memo, or STFU.
Or just STFU anyway.
Classic Putin, Erdogen, Thai generals, Meduro tactics.