Soaring Eagles

Nunes Nonsense:  As expected, the Nunes memo was released after Trump gave the go ahead for its contents to be declassified. The memo is now out in the open and though a good number of Congressional Republicans and Trump’s most valued advisor, Fox’s Sean Hannity, are one hundred percent certain that the memo has fully vindicated Trump while discrediting the Mueller investigation, it hasn’t.  By cherry picking points out of a sixty page FISA warrant application, the memo tries to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation questioning the legality of the surveillance of Carter Page, one of the Trump campaign’s security advisors, the guy who in addition to hanging with Russian spies bragged about being an advisor to the Kremlin as far back as 2013.  In short, the memo claims that the warrant to surveil Page is based mostly on the infamous Steele dossier, though it wasn’t.  It goes on to imply that the FBI and Department of Justice, particularly former FBI Director Comey, his staff of Hillary loving agents and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein intentionally misled the FISA court judge about their reliance on the Steele Dossier, again wrong because the Steele Dossier was one of the least consequential reasons given to the judge for extending the warrant and when mentioned it’s described as a product of “opposition” research.  In any case, as one former justice department attorney said, it’s not uncommon for the evidence used to justify warrants to come from unusual, even disreputable, sources because when you’re investigating criminal enterprises evidence rarely comes from “nuns and saints.” Trump and Trump Jr spent a good portion of their weekend celebrating the memo’s release, saying that it proves there is no collusion and no obstruction. That message failed to make it to Trey Gowdy who was one of the authors of the memo and the only Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee to actually read the entire text of the FISA warrant application.  Yesterday on Face the Nation, Gowdy defended the Russia investigation saying “So you need an investigation into Russia. You need an investigation into the Trump Tower and the Cambridge Analytica email, separate and apart from the dossier.”  It sounds like Gowdy has seen lots things about Trump & Co which concern him bigly.  Maybe that’s why he’s decided to exit Congress at the end of the year.  As to Nunes, he’s not done with his Joe McCarthy act, he’s announced that this memo was just the first of many that he plans to publish, his next target is the Hillary invested State Department.    

The Democratic Rebuttal:  Democratic representative Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence Committee, the only other member of that committee who’s actually been allowed to read the whole Carter Page FISA application,  has prepared his own memo, one that rebuts the Nunes memo by pointing out its inaccuracies and explaining its half-truths.  Purportedly the Schiff memo wasn’t released simultaneously with the Nunes nonsense because there wasn’t enough time for it to be fully vetted and neither Nunes or the White House wanted to hold their diatribe up while the Schiff memo went through a review process.  In reality it wasn’t released because the Trump team wanted to give the Nunes version a head start in the news cycle.  Trump now faces a bit of a dilemma.  The Schiff memo can’t be released unless he declassifies it.  He claims that he declassified the Nunes memo because the public deserves full transparency which makes it hard for him to refuse to also declassify the Schiff memo.  If Trump signs off on the Schiff memo, the Democratic narrative will get out, if he doesn’t he will further feed claims that he only greenlighted the Nunes version of events in an attempt to delegitimize the Mueller investigation, confirming allegations that it was just another one of his efforts to obstruct justice.  It’s kind of a no win for Trump but then again he’s remarkably successful at twisting narratives so it may not matter, in any case his followers will stick with the Nunes version of events regardless of what’s contained in the Democrats rebuttal.  For what it’s worth,  Trump says he’ll sign off on the Schiff memo as soon as its released out of the Intelligence Committee, but Trump’s been known to change his mind and  Nunes controls the Intelligence committee and could still try to block the rebuttal.  Schiff isn’t the only Democrat who was granted access to the entirety of the FISA application, Representative Jerry Nadler, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, has also read it.  He came out swinging over the weekend, focusing on the memo’s legal argument.  He said that the FISA court had "probable cause" to believe Page was "an agent of foreign power" and that nothing in the Nunes memo proves that the government did not have enough evidence beyond the Steele Dossier to seek a FISA warrant.  He also rebuts Nunes’ claim that then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the House Intelligence Committee that the surveillance warrant would not have been sought without the disputed dossier. Nadler's analysis called that claim "deliberately misleading and deeply wrong on the law," noting that the Nunes memo itself says the FBI counterintelligence investigation was triggered by information on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, the guy that Trump’s team still asserts was just a coffee boy, in July 2016, before the Page FISA application was filed.  To the extent that the Democrats manage to win control of the House in November, Nadler will be the guy running the impeachment hearings.  He seems to be practicing for his moment in the sun.  Speaker Ryan may be practicing for something too.  He still hasn’t announced whether or not he is running for reelection but he did manage to make the gaffe of the weekend.  With everyone more or less focused on the Nunes memo and football, he tried to pivot to tax cuts, tweeting "A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year." He deleted that tone deaf tweet but not before it went viral.  Democrat Randy Bryce, the steel worker making a run for Ryan’s seat, couldn’t be happier about Ryan’s gift, he’ll be using that tweet in his next campaign ad.

The Other Guys:  FBI Director Christopher Wray hasn’t resigned but is fairly furious that the Nunes memo was released over his objections.  He should have had some sense of what he was signing up for when he accepted the director job, but probably didn’t realize that he’d be at war with Trump so soon into his term.  Instead of resigning, he sent an email to his staff thanking them for “standing strong together, and for keeping your faith in this institution that means so much to all of us.” Addressing the “talk on cable TV and social media,” he said “Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.” He also signaled that he was staying to “defend your integrity and professionalism every day.”  Attorney General Sessions is trying to play to two audiences.  On the one hand he didn’t criticize the Nunes memo, saying instead that like every organization Justice could do somethings better, on the other hand he said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the guy who stands between Mueller and Trump, and Rachel Brand, next in line after Rosenstein, are Harvard graduates who represent the "kind of quality and leadership that we want in the department."  Rosenstein has got to be chugging heartburn medicine, he’s not being paid enough for his angst.  Everyone in Trump land insists that he won’t be fired, but it’s fair to assume that’s only true so long as Trump can be kept under control.  On the legal front, its worth noting that Rosenstein is not the only current government lawyer who signed off on one of the Carter Page warrant extensions, Dana Boente who was the Federal Attorney who signed off on Trump’s travel ban after Sally Yates was fired, signed off on one of the earlier extensions. Boente, who was subsequently forced out of that job, was recently appointed by Wray to serve as the FBI’s General counsel.  If Trump tries to fire Rosenstein for inappropriately signing off on a Page warrant,  will he also force Wray to fire Boente?  Obstructing justice is complicated.  

DACA and Funding:  The government runs out of money again this week and little progress has been made on a DACA resolution.  Majority Leader McConnell promised that he would allow a DACA legislation to come to the Senate floor for a “regular” process of debate and amendments by February 8.  It looks like Senators McCain and Coons are going to hold him to that promise.  They plan to introduce legislation today that offers a path to citizenship for Dreamers and orders nothing more than a comprehensive study to determine what border-security measures are needed. Their bill stops well short of almost all of Trump’s immigration wish list and doesn’t provide wall funding but it is similar to legislation introduced in the House by Texas Republican Will Hurd  and California Democrat Pete Aguilar.  McCain’s days may be numbered but he’s not going out without a fight and he seems determined to speak his mind.  In addition to pushing for Dreamer friendly DACA legislation,  he’s slammed his Republican colleagues saying that by releasing the Nunes memo “we are doing Putin’s job for him.”      

Human Resources:  One time Michael Flynn deputy KT McFarland is finally out of the running for the Singapore Ambassador post. Recognizing that her involvement in relaying details of Flynn’s sanctions discussion with former Russian Ambassador Kislyak to Trump at Mar a Lago would make her confirmation hearing awkward at best, she pulled her name from consideration.  The White House has also withdrawn the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to serve as head of the Council on Environmental Quality.  Apparently her selection had failed to garner support from some key Senate Republicans who raised questions about her lack of knowledge about anything having to do with science.  Reince Priebus may be gone from the White House but he is still towing the Trump line.  Yesterday he told Meet the Press that the Don Jr meeting in Trump Tower with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was really just about adoptions and that “Magitsky Act” thing. Priebus has been interviewed by Mueller, wonder if he lied to him too.  All in all, it was a tough weekend for Patriots.