Then on Monday, the events occurred as described below in this article by a group of Washington Post reporters:
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"Early this month, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein trekked to Capitol Hill in a last-ditch effort to avoid giving Republican lawmakers access to intelligence they considered so sensitive that it could not leave their control.
"House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) had been agitating for information — which included investigative documents, interviews with top FBI officials and texts between FBI employees — for months as part of his investigation into the Justice Department's handling of the Russia investigation. Now, he was threatening to hold Justice officials in contempt. The two law enforcement leaders hoped House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) might be more sympathetic to their concerns.
"Rosenstein did most of the talking as the two men pressed their case in a closed-door meeting, urging the speaker to let the Justice Department withhold at least some documents, according to people familiar with the exchange. Ryan, however, was unmoved. Nunes's committee, he argued, routinely deals in sensitive, raw intelligence, and this case was no different, the people said.
"The episode would prove a revealing skirmish between the Hill and the Justice Department in an increasingly acrimonious war over the Russia investigation. Current and former law enforcement officials say the feuding — which they say seems driven in some measure by a GOP effort to discredit the Russian investigation — threatens to expose sensitive sources and methods that could be exploited by foreign adversaries, and curtail intelligence-sharing with some of our closest allies, including Britain.
"Nunes ultimately used the information he obtained to create a four-page memo critical of the Justice Department and FBI. And to the dismay of Democrats and various intelligence and law enforcement officials, he and his Republican colleagues are taking steps to release it.
"On Monday, Nunes's committee voted on party lines to authorize its release, which gives the White House up to five days to intervene before it becomes public. What exactly the memo says — and how significant it is in showing any alleged wrongdoing at the Justice Department and FBI — is a matter of intense debate. . .
[The Republican case is that the FISA surveillance warrant was obtained from the FISA court based on the Steele dossier, much of which has been corroborated but it is not a finished report. However, the FBI has said some time back that the Steele dossier was not the basis for the FISA application; it merely confirmed some intelligence the FBI already had obtained in other ways. My hunch is that the FBI does not want to reveal the true source of their surveillance data that justified the FISA warrant -- because, in effect, they would be giving it to a Trump surrogate, and it may still be a source in an ongoing investigation of Trump and his team. But the Republicans think they have proof that the FBI was biased toward Clinton because at some point, a PAC supporting her had paid for some of the work done to compile the Steele dossier. - RR]
"The FISA court was apparently not told of the dossier's Democratic Party funding, according to a person familiar with the memo.
"That assertion could provide conservatives ammunition to criticize the Russia investigation and lay the groundwork to possibly discredit whatever conclusions those working on it reach. . . .
"Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) [a member of the committee] suggested the memo would be explosive: 'We get this memo out there, and people will see, the fix was in.' Another Republican who has seen it said it might not be the smoking gun conservatives have described. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said that . . . he largely attributed that uproar to cable news coverage of it. . . .
[Another report has it that Russian bots are amping up the digital demand to "release the memo," adding to the political firestorm this is becoming - RR]
Adding to the push to release the memo are members of the House Freedom Caucus, who met with the president and convinced him that it would help him by discrediting the FBI and the Mueller investigation. So now Trump is said to be pushing to have it released.
The perfidy and political motivation of Nunes and his Republican members are added to by these facts:
(1) The Justice Department wrote a strongly worded letter to the Committee saying that it would be "extremely reckless" to release this memo containing classified information and urging them not to do so.
(2) When that did not dissuade Nunes, the FBI and DoJ both asked to be able to come meet with and brief the committee on why they are so concerned with the release. The committee refused even to do that.
(3) The Democrats on the committee have written their own counter-memo, explaining what is factually incorrect, misleading and lacking context that puts it all in a different light. They requested to at least have their memo released at the same time. The committee voted, along party lines, not to allow the Democrats to release their memo, until perhaps some time later.
(4) Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee has said publicly that the release of the Nunes' memo could "compromise sources and methods" of the intelligence community and damage U.S. relations with its intelligence partners around the world.
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That's where we are. Devin Nunes, chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence was a member of the Trump Transition Team, and he is obviously doing the Trump administration's cover work. Soon after the investigation began, he had to recuse himself from the committee's Russia influence investigation because of the midnight stunt he pulled with the White House -- where he snuck over at midnight to pick up some documents, only to parade over to the White House the next day to publicly "deliver" these documents he had acquired that purportedly showed some nefarious misconduct by the DoJ during the Obama administration that resulted in surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser.
Now, this is just a continuation of all that -- but at a later and much more dangerous stage. We have a war between Republican members of the House and their own Justice Department and FBI, headed by appointees of Trump. It's not just Republicans and Democrats fighting. Republicans are fighting Republicans -- but especially they are fighting the rule of law -- and putting their party ahead of their country.
Ralph
PS: Just saw a report that leaves me more confused about this Nunes' memo. HuffPost political writers quote Paul Ryan as saying that the Nunes memo is completely unrelated to the Mueller investigation and that he hopes the one is not used to undermine the other. Ryan further said: (1) that he wants the memo released because of the questions about violating an American's civil liberties; (2) because this was separate from the Mueller investigation; (3) because there may have been 'malfeasance' at the FBI; and (4) because it's important to the public to be able to trust the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Now is that all clear? Maybe . . . but then, what is it about?
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