Well, it looks like we were right. The so-called “Nunes nemo” turned out to be faker than a Trump Tower orgasm. For all the buildup, it didn’t, as Republican Congressman Steve King promised, bring to light a conspiracy “worse than Watergate.” It didn’t, as wed been led to believe by Sean Hannity and others, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that that a secret society of anti-Trump operatives at the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice had constructed the Russian narrative out of thin air. In fact, it pretty much proved the opposite.
We’d been told that this memo would contain evidence that our intelligence community had placed Trump advisor Carter Page, an innocent American, under federal surveillance, based upon nothing more than lies cooked up by the Clinton campaign, and fed to the Department of Justice by way of what we’ve come to know as the Steele dossier. That’s not at all what the Nunes memo does, though.
Here are my two big takeaways from the Nunes memo. First, it fails to prove that the FISA warrant against Page was based on the Steele dossier, which, yes, was funded at least in part by those close to the Clinton campaign. [The research was initiated, as we’ve already established, when the conservative website, The Washington Free Beacon, hired Fusion GPS to look into Trump’s unethical business dealings during the primaries.] The Nunes memo clearly acknowledges that the FISA application also included information about statements made by Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos, who, as you’ll recall, had told an Australian diplomat in London that the Trump campaign was about to receive Democratic Party emails stolen by the Russians. [At this point in time, as you may recall, the DNC didn’t even know that they’d been hacked.] And, second, the Nunes memo fails to make the case that Carter Page was surveilled because of his position on the Trump campaign. In fact, the Nunes memo confirms that American intelligence agencies had been keeping tabs on Page since 2013, when they first discovered that he was being recruited by the Kremlin. Oh, and here’s the best part. Just after the Nunes memo dropped, Time magazine released evidence of a letter to an academic publisher, written by Page on August 25, 2013, in which he actually refers to himself as “an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin.” So, to believe that the surveillance of Page was the work of deep state operatives intent on scuttling the Trump campaign, you’d have to believe that these shadowy figures started their work back in 2013, three years before Page joined the Trump team, and well before Trump even announced his run for president.
What’s more, we now know that the FISA warrant against Page wasn’t just signed-off on by one Republican-appointed federal judge, but by four, as it was renewed three times. Furthermore, we know that each of these 90-day renewals would have required additional information to be submitted. In other words, in the opinion of these judges, they didn’t just have cause to believe that Page was a Russian agent, but the FISA surveillance was generating evidence that proved this to be the case. So, even if the first FISA warrant were issued solely based on the Steele dossier, the intelligence community found enough additional evidence to justify the renewal of the surveillance three times.
And here’s another interesting tidbit. Nunes has since said that he’s never even seen the application for the FISA warrant against Page, which his whole memo is predicated upon. You know who has actually seen the application, though? Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, who, by the way, has since said that “the contents of this memo do not – in any way – discredit his investigation. Curiously, Gowdy also just announced that he would not be seeking reelection in 2018. [Could he perhaps see the writing on the wall, that this is the end of the Republican Party?]
So, have you got all that? The Nunes memo, while it’ll likely be cited by President Trump as justification for shutting down the Mueller investigation, didn’t really do anything except show just what a weak hand the administration has… This was their big chance to demonstrate the existence of a deep state conspiracy, and all they showed was that Trump advisor Carter Page had been under surveillance for three years prior to joining the Trump administration, that the Steel dossier didn’t trigger anything, and that George Papadopoulos is the one who really blew the whole case wide open, when he told that Australian ambassador in London about how the Trump administration knew the Russians had successfully hacked Democratic Party emails.
Here, in case you missed them, are just a few of my favorite responses to the Nunes memo.
The memo was released, contains nothing of substance, and Congressional Republicans are quite clearly complicit in this White House’s efforts to undermine and obstruct justice.
Lock every single one of these bastards up.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) February 2, 2018
That’s it? Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen. For what? DOJ & FBI must keep doing their jobs.
— James Comey (@Comey) February 2, 2018
As for how the memo came to be, Congressman Adam Schiff appears to think it’s very possible that Nunes and his staff coordinated with the White House. Here’s video from the Congressman’s appearance earlier today on This Week. [So, if someone on the office of Devin Nunes flips, that’s just one more nail in Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice coffin.]
Rep. Adam Schiff on House Intel Chair Devin Nunes: "I think it's very possible his staff worked with the White House and coordinated the whole effort with the White House." #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/HymYXRERzq
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) February 4, 2018
At least one person, though, still seems to think that the Nunes memo proves a conspiracy at the highest levels of our American intelligence infrastructure, and that’s our President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who today said that the Russia investigation is akin to “McCarthyism,” and that “Democrats would rather see America fail than succeed with Donald Trump at the helm.” Oh, and he also tweeted out the following.
OK, so here’s what you can do, assuming all of this makes you want to stand up and do something.
1. You can call you elected officials and demand that they support the release of “the Democratic memo,” which both corrects mistakes found in the Nunes memo and provides much needed context for the Nunes memo.
2. When you have them on the phone, you can request that your elected representatives in D.C. also support bipartisan legislation to protect the Mueller investigation, so that Donald Trump cannot shut it down.
3. You can ask your Representative in the House to demand that Nunes be removed from the House Intelligence Committee for this most recent stunt, which has done incredible damage to our intelligence gathering capabilities.
4. You can donate a few bucks to Andrew Janz, the Democrat who will be running against Nunes in November.
