Search found 1 match for ReleaseTheMemo

Vox wrote:
The real reason the Nunes memo matters

Jan. 30, 2018

When House Republicans voted on Monday night to release a memo, compiled by Rep. Devin Nunes, alleging anti-Trump bias at the FBI, they raised a very serious question for American democracy.

The question is not whether there was a plot against Trump at the FBI, as the Nunes memo reportedly alleges. There is no evidence for such a claim, and it doesn’t pass the smell test. The real question is this: Will the FBI and Justice Department remain semi-independent agencies that check the president’s authority — or will they be brought under President Donald Trump’s direct control?

“Trump is shockingly overt about believing that the problem here is that the FBI is staffed by loyalists to the wrong person,” says Julian Sanchez, an expert on the intelligence community at the libertarian Cato Institute. “He does, in fact, seem to think that the job of the DOJ, and the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community is to protect the president and follow his orders — including going after his political enemies . . .

[. . . ]

What’s really important about the memo is whom it blames for all of this: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The memo, per a New York Times account, says that Rosenstein is the one who signed off on this [so called] sham FISA application.

Rosenstein is, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal, the person supervising special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump can’t fire Mueller without Rosenstein’s say-so, and Rosenstein said in December that he sees no “good cause” to fire Mueller.

Rep. Nunes, the memo’s author, and the Republicans who have been most vocal in calling for its release, like Rep. Matt Gaetz, are also some of the Mueller investigation’s fiercest critics.

“The release of the memo, and the fabrication of a set of ideas around the memo, empowers Trump to go after the FBI,” Goodman says. “The ultimate goal is undermining the Mueller investigation. There doesn’t seem to be another reason for the president to be so obsessed with Rod Rosenstein and to be gunning for him.”

[. . . ]

How does this end?

There are two broad ways this war could go. In the first, the FBI is brought to heel. Rosenstein and the other senior FBI executives are fired and replaced with more Trump-friendly appointees. The Mueller investigation is quashed, and the bureau essentially serves more like an arm of the Trump administration than a quasi-independent agency.

The implications of this scenario for American democracy are pretty scary.

CNN wrote:
Exclusive:  Trump asked Rosenstein if he was 'on my team'

January 31, 2018

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump's help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump's support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.

. . . Trump wanted to know where the special counsel's Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was "on my team."

The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key. The exchange could raise further questions about whether Trump was seeking to interfere in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia and obstruction of justice by the White House.

[. . .]

CNN has reported that Trump has been venting to his aides about Rosenstein in recent weeks and even raised the possibility of his removal.

Observer wrote:
Team Trump Just Blew its Cover

by John R. Schindler

January 30, 2018

. . . The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which conducts oversight of our Intelligence Community, was meeting in secret to vote on releasing a memo written by the staff of the HPSCI’s Republican chair, Rep. Devin Nunes.  This four-page memo has been the talk of the town for the last week, since Nunes claims it demonstrates malfeasance by the FBI in some sort of conspiracy to prevent the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016.

. . . The memo, as explained by Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the HPSCI, is merely “a hodgepodge of false statements and misleading representations” based on selective reading of intelligence documents.

. . . For this reason, the HPSCI’s Democratic minority crafted a classified rebuttal to the Nunes memo. To placate the right-wing firestorm created by Fox News, late yesterday afternoon, the [Republican majority of the] HPSCI voted to release the classified Nunes memo to the public this week. The vote was along partisan lines (there are 13 Republicans and eight Democrats on the committee) and, in a telling move, the [Republican-controlled] HPSCI voted to not release the [Democrats'] minority’s rebuttal to the Nunes memo. Above all, there has been no move to release the underlying intelligence behind the memo, thus rendering it useless as a substantive document.

. . . . Most seriously, Nunes has shattered decades of political consensus on his important committee. The HPSCI’s job of making sure our spy agencies are acting ethically and legally is supposed to be above partisan politics; this tradition has been broadly respected since the HPSCI and its Senate counterpart were founded in the 1970s. Now Nunes has trashed all that to protect Trump from the Russia investigation. It’s necessary to ask Devin Nunes and all the Republicans on his committee what was so important that it was worth making the HPSCI a nakedly partisan instrument, in a move that will have long-term consequences for our national security, all of them negative.

Fresno Bee wrote:
Rep. Devin Nunes, Trump's stooge, attacks FBI

By the Editorial Board

Janaury 25, 2018

What, pray tell, does Rep. Devin Nunes think he’s doing by waving around a secret memo attacking the FBI, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency?

He certainly isn’t representing his Central Valley constituents or Californians, who care much more about health care, jobs and, yes, protecting Dreamers than about the latest conspiracy theory.

Instead, he’s doing dirty work for House Republican leaders trying to protect President Donald Trump in the Russia investigation.

It’s no accident that this latest attempt to discredit the FBI and distract the public is happening at the same time special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe appears to be picking up steam – and focusing on possible obstruction of justice by the president.

[. . . ]

Nunes of Tulare is sheltered in a relatively safe Republican district, and may believe he will pay no political price for unfairly attacking law enforcement and protecting Trump. But his performance as chairman of the highly sensitive House Intelligence Committee has been nothing short of embarrassing.

Instead of taking Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election seriously and leading an impartial and bipartisan inquiry, Nunes has colluded with the White House. . .

[. . .]

Now, he’s being celebrated in Trumpworld with the four-page memo that accuses the FBI of political bias and misdeeds. Drafted by Nunes staffers, it apparently summarizes classified material and alleges abuse of the surveillance process by the FBI and Justice Department to target the Trump campaign. Conservative media and some Republicans in Congress are calling for it to be released publicly and using it to call for Mueller’s investigation to be shut down.

There are reasons to be very skeptical of this memo. . . Democrats who have seen it, including Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, say it’s full of inaccuracies and innuendo. And the social media campaign #ReleaseTheMemo may be promoted by Russian-linked bots, just as during the 2016 campaign.

[. . . ]

. . . The Justice Department wrote to him, warning that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release the memo without any review for possible risk to national security or ongoing investigations.

[. . . ]

We also can’t forget that Republicans defended the FBI when Democrats criticized Comey last year for reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just before the election.

But now we’re supposed to believe some Republicans that there’s some kind of anti-Trump “secret society” within the FBI? It’s ridiculous.

Everyone – Republicans, Democrats, advocacy groups on all sides and the media – should do our democracy a favor: Stop with the hyperventilating and let Mueller finish his investigation and get to the truth.