Attorney General

House Intelligence Committee releases controversial Nunes Memo – and an analysis that destroys it

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House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes never reviewed the supporting classified intelligence in the FISA Court warrant for Carter Page — a Russian agent the Trump White House has gone to great lengths to distance from the Trump campaign to the point of  erasing him from memory — from which Nunes and his staff members, and several other GOP members of his committee, have concocted the “Nunes Memo” asserting the FBI violated Carter Page’s civil liberties allegedly motivated by partisan bias against the Trump campaign. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Nunes has not read the warrant from which the memo is said to be drawn. The Justice Department considers such warrants extremely sensitive and allowed only one Democrat and one Republican from the committee, plus staff, to view it. Rather than do so himself, Mr. Nunes designated Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina to be the Republican reader.

Ranking minority member Adam Schiff of California was the Democratic reader.

President Trump was only vaguely aware of the Nunes Memo until two GOP House Freedom Caucus members brought it to his attention in a Jan. 18 phone call. ‘Never any hesitation’: Trump was quickly persuaded to support memo’s release:

Over the next two weeks, according to interviews with eight senior administration officials and other advisers to the president, he tuned in to [FAUX News aka Trump TV] segments about the memo. He talked to friends and advisers about it. And, before he had even read it, Trump became absolutely convinced of one thing: The memo needed to come out.

Sean Hannity has been flogging this FBI conspiracy theory on his program every night for weeks now, and Donald Trump takes his cues from FAUX & Friends and Sean Hannity.

Sean Hannity denied a Daily Beast report that he personally advised President Trump regarding the Nunes Memo, but this is really beside the point: Trump watches FAUX News and does as he is told (just follow his tweets).

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In unprecedented move, GOP House Intelligence Committee jeopardizes national security to aid Donald Trump in obstruction of justice

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Donald Trump is engaged in a slow-motion “Saturday Night Massacre” purge to get to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He does not necessarily have to fire Mueller, but he can put him on an island by replacing everyone in the chain of command around him with yes-men who will deny Mueller resources, or deny his requests for subpoenas of documents or witnesses, etc., to effectively impede his investigation.

As I pointed out in a link to Foreign Policy yesterday, it reported on an organized campaign to discredit top DOJ and FBI leadership, expressly so that they would lose power in acting as witnesses to support Comey.

President Donald Trump pressed senior aides last June to devise and carry out a campaign to discredit senior FBI officials after learning that those specific employees were likely to be witnesses against him as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to two people directly familiar with the matter.

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The FBI officials Trump has targeted are Andrew McCabe, the current deputy FBI director and who was briefly acting FBI director after Comey’s firing; Jim Rybicki, Comey’s chief of staff and senior counselor; and James Baker, formerly the FBI’s general counsel. Those same three officials were first identified as possible corroborating witnesses for Comey in a June 7 article in Vox. Comey confirmed in congressional testimony the following day that he confided in the three men.

FBI Director Wray replaced Jim Rybicki last week. Baker was reassigned in December. And now McCabe is gone.

Trump has previously attempted to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign, and to force Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to resign, who is now the target of the #ReleaseTheMemo smear campaign from Rep. Devin Nunes, FAUX News (aka Trump TV) and Russian intelligence bots. Russia-linked Twitter accounts are working overtime to help Devin Nunes and WikiLeaks.

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Tea-Publicans in Congress are accomplices to Trump’s obstruction of justice

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I covered this topic in an earlier post, The GOP war on law enforcement and the rule of law to obstruct justice.

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post adds, Republicans risk becoming accomplices in obstruction of justice (excerpt):

Republicans in Congress have shown none of the courage Comey, Wray, McGahn, etc., demonstrated. With the exception of chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Republicans have demonstrated little inclination to dig deeply into the scandal or to restrain Trump. Two bipartisan bills seeking to hinder Trump from firing Mueller remain dormant. Democrats should insist these get an up-or-down vote.

Moreover, the antics of House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) should be seen in the context of Trump’s multiple efforts to decapitate the FBI and the Russia investigation. Nunes is plowing the way — cooking up conspiracy theories and propounding baseless allegations against Mueller and the FBI — to predispose the public to accept Mueller’s firing. He is encouraging, almost baiting, Trump to fire Mueller. He is also assisting Trump by tainting the jury (the American people), if you will, to accept or even applaud Mueller’s firing. From the unmasking stunt to his latest “memo,” he has tried to distract from the Russian threat and discredit law enforcement.

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Special Counsel closes in on Trump inner circle in obstruction of justice investigation

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Our Confederate Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, is in legal jeopardy as Special Counsel Robert Mueller closes in on the obstruction of justice leg of his investigation.

Sessions was directly involved in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. According to Axios.com, “at the public urging of President Donald Trump — Sessions has [also] been pressuring FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but Wray threatened to resign if McCabe was removed. Scoop: FBI director threatened to resign amid Trump, Sessions pressure:

  • Wray’s resignation under those circumstances would have created a media firestorm. The White House — understandably gun-shy after the Comey debacle — didn’t want that scene, so McCabe remains.
  • Sessions told White House Counsel Don McGahn about how upset Wray was about the pressure on him to fire McCabe, and McGahn told Sessions this issue wasn’t worth losing the FBI Director over, according to a source familiar with the situation.
  • Why it matters: Trump started his presidency by pressuring one FBI Director (before canning him), and then began pressuring another (this time wanting his deputy canned). This much meddling with the FBI for this long is not normal.

McGahn has been informed about these ongoing conversations, though he has not spoken with Wray about FBI personnel, according to an administration source briefed on the situation. Trump nominated Wray, previously an assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, last June to replace James Comey as director.

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The Grand Obstruction Party – abuse of power and corruption of the independence of the Department of Justice

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Donald Trump’s general election campaign was built around two conspiracy theories that came from his chief political strategist Stephen Bannon’s partner at Breitbart and the Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer, and his book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” Schweizer made unsubstantiated claims that foreign interests curried favor with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by paying huge speaking fees to her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The second line of attack was the private email server used by Secretary of State Clinton, and the claim that she recklessly exposed highly classified state secrets to computer hackers.

The FBI conducted an investigation into both matters and closed its investigations without any charges being filed against the Clintons. (For Trump, this only became evidence of FBI bias and “deep state” support for the Clintons. It was one motivating factor behind his firing of FBI Director James Comey).

These conspiracy theories, nevertheless, were daily fodder in the conservative media entertainment complex and the Trump campaign, with Trump’s characterization of “crooked Hillary” and chants of “lock her up” at Trump campaign rallies.

During the second presidential debate, Trump went so far as to threaten to jail Clinton if he wins the election: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your (missing email) situation,” Trump said, “because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.”

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