Dems response to Nunes memo released

A redacted version of the Democratic response to the House Intelligence Committee's Republican "Nunes memo" has been released -- some three weeks after the Nunes' memo was made public with much partisan fanfare and hype.

Of course, that was all a political stunt by the White House's favorite toadie, Devin Nunes, who was part of the Trump transition team and also chairs the House Intelligence Committee.   He was forced to recuse himself from the committee's investigation into the Russian hacking into our election because of his very partisan activities.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is the ranking Democrat on the committee, and it was he who wrote the response, which debunks the premise and the distortions in the Nunes memo.   The Democrats wanted their memo to be released at the same time as the Republican (Nunes) version so that the public would have both sides of the controversy.

But that wasn't allowed by President Trump, who had been willing to release the Nunes memo, sight unseen, and despite anguished pleas from the DoJ and FBI that it was both misleadingly incomplete and that it would betray secrets about our own surveillance methods and possibly expose individuals.    Trump didn't care about that.

But, when it came to the Dems' memo -- which refuted and exposed the falsity of Nunes' memo -- Trump punted to the FBI and said they had to redact sensitive information, and then he would consider releasing it.    With the foot-dragging in the White House, that took two weeks -- as intended by the Republicans -- giving them time to spread their false narrative and have it fixed in the minds of the public before the exposure of their duplicity was revealed.

This would have been far more important two weeks ago.   But all the indictments that Mueller has filed in the meantime have taken over the story and proven that there is plenty of "there," there.   So these memos about an obscure point in the FISA application from October 2016 are now relatively unimportant, except for how they expose the Republicans' perfidity.

Other than a marker of the Republicans' efforts to obstruct justice, we can put this aside as a political stunt that has not derailed the Mueller investigation.   The professionals at the FBI and Justice Department have had their reputations restored by the professionalism and by the outcome of this stunt.

So, now it feels like things are back on track -- and the Republicans and Trumpsters are looking worse all the time.   There chants of "witch hunt" and "fake news" are like the after-echoes of a rally that's now over.

Trump's misstatements about it all are so distorted as to make him look silly to anyone who has even the basic knowledge of what has transpired.   He's operating at a childish level -- and his base simply does not care.

BTW:   A new SSRS poll conducted for CNN shows Trump's January approval bump having slid back 5 points to equal the lowest level of his presidency at 35% overall.   The partisan split is enormous:   80% of Republicans approve;  but only 5% of Democrats and 35% of Independents approve.

A separate poll conducted for USA Today by Suffolk University showed Trump with an approval rating of 38% with 60% disapproving.

Ralph