The famous Memo from the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee is
now available to the public. As Byron York
summarizes it, it's pretty damning of top officials in the Justice Department and the FBI. And perhaps some major media institutions should be added to that list. Mark Penn, pollster and adviser to the Clintons, believes that
the press has failed the American people in its coverage, or lack thereof, of this story:
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post yesterday ran editorials calling for prior restraint on a memo written by the duly elected chairman of the House Intelligence Committee after he and his staff reviewed classified documents related to the so-called Russia investigation. These editorials are a stain on American journalism, much like the Japanese internment camps were a stain on the record of the Supreme Court. They should — and, I think, will over time — regret them.
I have no idea what is in this memo, but it’s a memo. It’s speech. It’s from the very staff and people our Constitution assigns to oversee the Justice Department and the FBI. And the elected officials who wrote it think I should see it. The people who don’t want me to see it are the elected officials and leaders of the Democratic Party, the institutions and individuals whose actions are being reviewed, and several of the same newspapers that went to court to publish the “Pentagon Papers.”
Japanese internment camps! You have to be joking even to quote that! By implication, the FBI and the Justice Department, who also strenuously objected to the release of the memo, must also be guilty of this grave injustice, too. You really seem to be buying in to the phony case by Devin Nunes et al that it is the government that is corrupt and Trump is blameless. I find that frightening.
ReplyDeleteYou quote Byron York as saying, "I have no idea what is in this memo, but it’s a memo. It’s speech. It’s from the very staff and people our Constitution assigns to oversee the Justice Department and the FBI."
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Declassified Memo and What It Means," this is not just a memo and just speech. The release of the memo was unprecedented. The article states:
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The House made the memo public under an obscure rule that has never been previously invoked, according to the Congressional Research Service. The rule dates back to the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in the 1970s after Watergate and the public release of a secret Vietnam War study called the Pentagon Papers. The rules allows the intelligence committees to vote to make public classified information if they believe it would be in the public interest. The rules also allows the president to object, triggering a review by the full House or Senate on a final decision whether to make the information public.
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The unprecedented release of the memo, based on classified intelligence reports, was opposed by the Justice Department and the FBI. It has also been denounced by John McCain.
The WSJ article asks, "What are the stakes?" and answers:
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In a word, high. Congressional Republicans and the White House are using the memo’s release as a way to cast doubt on the integrity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s broad probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and, by extension, the subsequent investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Mr. Mueller’s probe is much wider than Mr. Page, looking at Russian election interference, whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and whether Mr. Trump sought to obstruct justice in connection with the investigation. Mr. Trump denies any collusion or obstruction; Russia denies interfering with the election. [boldface added]
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It was the consensus of all the journalists on Washington Week tonight that the real purpose of the memo had nothing to do with congressional oversight of the FBI, but was rather an attempt to discredit and weaken Rod Rosenstein and the whole probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Correction: I seem to have mistakenly attributed the outrageous quote to Byron York instead of Mark Penn.
DeletePrior to the arrival of Trump as a presidential candidate for the 2016 election, there were certain columnists I used to read either to make myself angry (Charles Krauthammer, Jennifer Rubin) or to find out what the "other side" was thinking and to try to honestly understand (George Will, Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker). On rare occasions, I found myself in agreement with a column of even those in the first category. So now I continue to read Jennifer Rubin, but it is because I so often wholeheartedly agree with her. In one of her latest columns, she says:
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In short, other than the memo confirming that Nunes and Trump are collectively out to discredit the intelligence community and to thereby impede the investigation into the president’s alleged wrongdoing, I cannot for the life of me figure out what this proves. The media, if forthright, will explain that to Americans who must by this time be very, very confused as to why Nunes and Trump have rejected the advice of top officials who said release of the memo compromises classified information.
This appears to be the second time (the first in the Oval Office with Russian officials) that Trump has handed the Russians classified material. If Trump is not a Russian agent, he surely is acting as effectively as one.
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David quotes Jennifer Rubin: " I cannot for the life of me figure out what this proves."
DeleteAssuming "this" is the Nunes memo, on its own terms it attempts to make a case that senior FBI and Justice Department officials bamboozled a FISA judge with a questionable warrant application. Naturally, if this weren't about Trump and Mueller, it wouldn't be a holy-smokes-stop-the-presses development. But it's a serious allegation even without the breathless political moment. Add to that the trappings which surround the release of the memo - the year of stonewalling the congressional committee's requests for information; the unending string of leaks from law enforcement; and the ferocious defense of law enforcement by the enemies of Trump of all stripes - and you've got the makings of a genuine scandal, not to mention a political donnybrook for the ages.
Why the NY Times and the Washington Post wouldn't want the memo to be released is hard to figure - although I daresay Donald Trump can offer an explanation. This kind of story should be the lifeblood of media news operations.
Jim P: "Why the NY Times and the Washington Post wouldn't want the memo to be released is hard to figure - although I daresay Donald Trump can offer an explanation. This kind of story should be the lifeblood of media news operations."
DeleteReally? I didn't detect that. In fact, I wondered if they were hunting around for a leak. Didn't they wanted both memos out, and we shall see if Trump signs off on the Democrat's memo.
I honestly do not care about the memo other than that my elected representatives are focusing in politicking than serving our nation.
ReplyDeleteWe have drought, large coastal areas prone to flood, compromised municiple water supplies, crumbling infrastructure, insurance costs that have reached a critical mass, soldiers dying for sketchy reasons in the Middle East, and Trump "draining the swamp" by installing hostile individuals to cabinet and agency positions.
In addition, the fissures along racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic lines are deepening.
It's certainly taking attention away from doing anything actually useful.
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ReplyDeleteHere is some interesting commentary on the Nunes Memo. I don't see that releasing this memo is in itself really so earth shaking. However I do have some areas of major concern. One is that parts of the memo reportedly have been redacted or changed, affecting its credibility or changing the meaning. Another is that a memo was compiled by Adam Schiff and fellow Democrats on House Select Intelligence Committee. The House Intelligence Committee however voted not to make this memo public. That seems blatantly partisan. It's pretty obvious that Trump is trying to get rid of Rosenstein. Which of course clears the path to getting rid of Mueller.
ReplyDeleteBelow some info about the Congressional Aide, Kashyap Patel, said to be the chief author of the memo.
ReplyDeleteI post it because I have been skeptical about the White House role in confecting the memo as part of Trump's attack on Mueller et al. But....take a look.
"A senior official for the Republican majority on the Intelligence Committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the purpose of the visit had been to make contact with Mr. Steele’s lawyers, not Mr. Steele. Still, the visit was highly unusual and appeared to violate protocol, because they were trying to meet with Mr. Steele outside official channels.
"Ordinarily, such a visit would be coordinated through lawyers, conducted with knowledge of the House Democrats, who were not informed and the American Embassy.
"In the months since, Mr. Patel has apparently forged connections at the White House. In November, he posted a series of photos to Facebook of him and several friends wearing matching shirts at the White House bowling alley. “The Dons hit the lanes at 1600 Pennsylvania,” Mr. Patel wrote under the photos."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/us/politics/kashyap-patel-nunes-memo.html
Here is another candidate for assisting Nunes in getting the Republican memo written--Michael Ellis, once a Nunes staffer in Congress, now working at the White House.
DeleteAll of this is grain of salt in the conspiracy theory file.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we-know-devin-nunes-probable-collaborator-at-the-white-house-michael-ellis
Hello - I'll clarify my point of view on this issue, and perhaps respond to one or two of the comments along the way.
ReplyDeleteMy basic point of view of the entire Mueller probe is that it's all about impeachment. Well, it's about other things, too, but we would do well to keep our eye on the ball, and that is the impeachment ball.
In other words: the odds of the Mueller probe directly doing something that would remove Donald Trump from office are vanishingly small. That is not to say that the probe can't do considerable political damage. But, if Trump were certain that the Republicans would retain control of the House after this fall's election, I believe he could ride out the Mueller probe.
But Trump can't be certain that the Republicans will keep control of the House. And as soon as (or if) the Democrats obtain a majority in the House, some one or another of them is virtually certain to initiate impeachment proceedings. In that scenario, the Mueller probe will have done the Democrats' homework for it - the presumption has to be that the independent prosecutor will be able to hand over a case that is virtually ready-made for Democrats to prosecute in an impeachment proceeding.
What would happen if the House tries to impeach President Trump? None of us knows, but if the American public isn't strongly in favor of the proceedings, the effort may not make it out of the House, and would almost certainly die in the Senate.
This is the potency of the Republican memo: it complicates and confuses what was formerly a fairly clean and simple story line for Democrats to present to the American public; and it wounds the credibility of the independent investigation. It makes it more difficult for Democrats to use the results of the Mueller probe, whatever they may be, as a pretext for impeaching Donald Trump.
When Hillary Clinton famously stated sometime during Bill's presidency that there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband, I didn't think she was entirely wrong: certainly there was not actually a conspiracy, but conservative elected officials, media, thought leaders and funders were rather impressively united against the Clinton presidency - and when his idiotic dalliance with an intern gave them an excuse to pounce, they pounced. I find the situation pretty similar now, except that it is the liberal establishment that is united against the president. And it is the New York Times, the Washington Post and many other media orgs whose editors and reporters lean left who are part of the united front. I have to say that I don't find the editorial judgment of the New York Times and the Washington Post objective and credible when it comes to Donald Trump. Something about him makes their noses point skyward and their lips curve into a sneer. The word that summarizes their attitude toward him and his supporters is "contempt". The wags and talking heads on the Sunday morning shows are filled to the brim with it. My view is that the Times and the Post are filtering everything they write and say about the Trump presidency through a thick filter of contempt.
This is why I think Penn makes some good points. If you find the Japanese interment camp comparison over the top, okay. But he's exactly right that their opposition to bringing the memo to the light of day is a blot on the record of these two newspapers. Am I right in recalling that both newspapers had reporters do time in jail for publishing classified materials during the George W Bush administration? What principle allows that but disallows the publication of this memo? My take is that any support for free speech they were able to muster apparently didn't survive its journey through the contempt filter.
Hi Jim...Not going to contest your take on the NYT and WashPost...They spend too much time on the president that's for sure. I find their coverage of Congressional shilly-shallying more useful on the range of issue about which the Congress is doing so little. Perhaps your use of contempt might better characterize the Dem-Repub antagonisms in both house, more so in the House than the Senate. In contrast, I find the WSJ largely giving Trump and everyone else in the government a pass with a light coating of fairy dust.
ReplyDeleteThe word contempt hadn't come to mind, but now that you bring it up, shouldn't it be applied to Trump himself. Isn't he contemptuous of the the norms and customs of candidacy as well as of the presidency itself? His treatment of some of his own appointments (Sessions, Wray, e.g.) seems to border not just on contempt for them and their offices, but for the role of president as head of the executive branch and the government.
And if memory serves (short-term thought it may be), it was Congress who jumped into the Russia issue because of hacking during the campaigns, and as we see, the Republicans are in charge of all the committees at work. Has Nunes dropped his interest in that issue in favor of supporting the president's charges of Witch-hunt. That seesm pretty sneering if not contemptuous of his responsibilities as head of the committee.
"The word contempt hadn't come to mind, but now that you bring it up, shouldn't it be applied to Trump himself. Isn't he contemptuous of the the norms and customs of candidacy as well as of the presidency itself? His treatment of some of his own appointments (Sessions, Wray, e.g.) seems to border not just on contempt for them and their offices, but for the role of president as head of the executive branch and the government."
ReplyDeleteYes. President Trump can be contemptuous. Undoubtedly, that is one of the qualities that attracted those who voted for him. But being contemptuous, and for that matter a blowhard and a jackass, shouldn't be grounds for impeachment. Even petty crimes (like making an independent counsel's investigation marginally more difficult) shouldn't clear that bar. The remedy for an overly contemptuous president is to not elect him or, failing that, not re-elect him.
Naturally, there are legitimate grounds for impeachment proceedings, and maybe Mueller's investigation has uncovered some. If it has, those haven't leaked yet.
"The remedy for an overly contemptuous president is not to elect him, or failing that, not to re-elect him." I agree with that. I actually feel that an impeachment trial would be worse for the country than just suffering his term out, as long as the checks and balances continue to work. Which they have, up to this point. Learn what we can from this experience, and move on. And, please God, elect somebody better next time.
DeleteJust to clarify: I think there's very little chance that grounds for impeachment will be found. We could imagine what they might be vis a vis Russia, say a video of Trump accepting several gold bars from Putin. It's possible some of the other "persons of interest" will be charged with something, even something having to do with Russia, but Trump is sure to pardon them. Furthermore, the Democrats would have to win both houses in November to carry out any impeachment proceedings (House charges); Senate tries). Hard to see that happening.
ReplyDeleteI keep hoping Trump will just get bored and resign. What are the chances of that?
As responsible Republicans now seem to be saying: let Mueller finish his work. Trump would be smart to go with that plan.