Nunes memo backfires

Four Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee have distanced themselves from the use President Trump is trying to make of the Nunes memo to discredit the Mueller investigation.   In contrast, these four -- one of whom is Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who read the documents and helped Nunes draft the memo -- are saying that it has nothing to do with the Mueller investigation, echoing what Speaker Paul Ryan said before it was released.

In addition, former CIA Director John Brennan said on Sunday's NBC "Meet the Press" that Nunes had selectively used information to accuse law enforcement officials of improper use of materials.  "It's just appalling and clearly underscores how partisan Mr. Nunes has become.  [Nunes] "has abused the chairmanship of the [Intelligence Committee]," Brennan said.

And then there's the article by Jonathan Chait on "The Daily Intelligencer," which makes this clarifying corrective.   He wrote that "there is one underlying truth.  The intelligence community truly fears [Trump] and considers him unfit for the presidency.    This is not because the intelligence community is traitorous, or left wing . . .   It is because the IC had early access to a wide array of terrifying intelligence linking Trump and his orbit to Russia.   People who spend their lives protecting their country from foreign threats saw in Trump a candidate who had at some level been compromised by one of them."

Chait then explains that Trump and his allies turned this around causally and claimed that -- because the intelligence community distrusts Trump -- its bias makes their investigation illegitimate.   According to this view, "If they were unbiased . . . they wouldn't be investigating Trump in the first place."

But it's the other way around.   Because of what the investigation revealed, they do not trust Trump to act in the best interests of our country.

As to their claim in the Nunes memo that the justification for the FISA warrant on Carter Page was tainted by bias, legal scholars and counterintelligence officers have explained that the FISA court routinely gets and considers information from biased sources.   That's not unusual or a problem   The application is 50 to 100 pages long, is scrupulously detailed, and all data is put in perspective of the source.    So that central claim of the Nunes memo carries no weight.

Chait also says that the other claim of bias in the memo -- that of the FBI agent Peter Strzok -- is also turned around.    A full review of the email chain shows that the negative comments about Trump as a president are rooted in the knowledge of his possible compromised position vis a vis Russia.

Chait concludes with this:  "Trump has not even bothered to conceal his belief that the memo gives him an excuse to replace Rod Rosenstein . . . with a more plaint figure.   Trump believes to his core that he is entitled to federal law enforcement run by personal loyalists, and that any investigation of him is per se evidence of disqualifying bias.  Nunes's memo places the House Republicans foursquare behind that grotesquely authoritarian belief."

No wonder some House Republicans are starting to jump ship.

Ralph