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I presume you know enough about Devin Nunes and his memo that I don’t need to provide a backgrounder.
Here are some links you can read for that, as well as decent analysis of the memo.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/1/16956290/nunes-memo-release-the-memo-fbi-russia
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/opinion/devin-nunes-memo.html
https://www.justsecurity.org/51778/qa-nunes-memo/
I can add a few comments in the name of bloggery:
1. Obviously there’s so much we don’t know that it's hard to make any accurate judgement about the memo’s significance – by itself it doesn't add up to much either way.
But based on what I’ve read so far, I’m going with the “nothingburger” camp. Even if the FBI didn’t inform FISC about the origins of the Steele dossier (and Nunes offers no hard proof of this), at most you could say that the FBI investigators made some mistakes or cut some corners. And because this is all related to one person (Carter Page) who was already under investigation, in the context of a larger investigation that began well before Page became part of it, I don’t see how this one alleged misstep amounts to discrediting the entire Russia investigation.
2. For that matter, I don't see why the FBI’s use of the Steele dossier – even in part – would discredit the investigation as a pro-Democrat plot against Trump. Nunes and the GOP are claiming it proves bias because the dossier was funded by Democrats, but we already know that Steele was initially hired by a conservative publication, the Washington Free Beacon, which was anti-Trump. And Nunes’ own memo admits the FBI started the investigation months before Steele handed the dossier to them.
3. I think what interests me the most is that in order for the Nunes memo to be nearly as explosive a slam-dunk as Nunes, Trump and Fox News makes out, it requires one to buy into a specific narrative, as summed up nicely in this series of charts, as well as by the following summation by Asha Rangappa at Just Security):
We’re also expected to believe this is all part of a Deep State™ operation by Democrats to overthrow the Presidency, even though the investigation began before Trump even won an election he was widely expected to lose (and did, if you go by the pop vote), and even though literally all players in the FBI side of the investigation are (or at least were appointed by) Republicans – to include James Comey, who apparently was so determined to overthrow Trump that he actually helped him win by announcing that he was reopening his investigation into Hillary’s emails in light of new evidence (which turned out to be nothing).
So, no. I prefer the simpler explanation: Trump and his minions are up to their necks in Russian ties, and at least some of them knowingly accepted help from the Russians to meddle in the election (or perhaps were blackmailed into it), and their only hope of getting away with it is by discrediting the entire FBI. I also think Trump is motivated as much by the sheer fact that proof of Russian interference would imply he couldn’t win without someone cheating on his behalf, and his ego simply won’t stand for it. I also suspect his proof lies in the notion that if the FBI was truly independent, Hillary would already be in Guantanamo Bay by now.
I don’t have any proof of that. But neither do the Deep State people. Anyway, that’s my prediction.
4. A quick word about the US Deep State™: bullshit.
5. A few more words about the US Deep State™: I think it’s bullshit in the sense that the term was coined to describe situations like the one in Turkey. The US is nowhere close to that situation except in the minds of paranoid Fox News personalities.
That said, I’m aware that The Left has their own version of the Deep State: the one in which intelligence and security agencies – the “permanent government” – have their own agenda, and have the ability to use their powers of secret surveillance to subvert democracy by secretly undermining an existing administration with “anonymous” leaks. Glenn Greenwald (who I usually agree with more often than not) has argued that the Trump/Russia scandal looks suspiciously like disinformation, that we shouldn't trust it at face value, and Democrats are enabling the Deep State simply because it's currently targeting the opposition.
The main difference: Trump/Hannity think (or pretend to think) the Deep State is a Democrat creation (probably by Obama) to subvert Republican power exclusively. Greenwald's version is that the only side the Deep State takes is its own, and that the real story isn’t that they’re taking aim at Trump, but the fact that they can do it at all. You can’t support them for doing it to Trump and ignore the fact that they could just as easily do it to Hillary, or Bernie, or anyone else.
I would agree that intel agencies have far more surveillance power than they should, and the potential for abuse is real. And we’ve seen what an FBI with a political agenda and free reign looks like (see: J Edgar Hoover). But again, none of this has achieved Erdogan-level Deep State. And we do have laws today that prevent any FBI director from being the next Hoover. In any case, I think this is a separate issue from the Trump/Russia investigation.
6. But as always, so what? Team Trump/Fox and their fans live in their own alt-reality where Obama and Hillary run the Deep State™ with the help of the Liberal Fake News Media (funded by George Soros) and are actively plotting to take over America and the world. It’s not original, but it’s a handy way to explain away anything negative about their man The Donald, and the Nunes memo SO proves that.
7. But then it could all be disinformation, couldn't it? The Russians, the CIA, the FBI, Fox News – it could all be run by Chinese hackers or a network of AI twitterbots some high school kid released as a prank. For all you know, I'm one of those bots and I autogenerated this just to mess with you.
Etc and so on.
Up from the deep.
This is dF
Here are some links you can read for that, as well as decent analysis of the memo.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/1/16956290/nunes-memo-release-the-memo-fbi-russia
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/opinion/devin-nunes-memo.html
https://www.justsecurity.org/51778/qa-nunes-memo/
I can add a few comments in the name of bloggery:
1. Obviously there’s so much we don’t know that it's hard to make any accurate judgement about the memo’s significance – by itself it doesn't add up to much either way.
But based on what I’ve read so far, I’m going with the “nothingburger” camp. Even if the FBI didn’t inform FISC about the origins of the Steele dossier (and Nunes offers no hard proof of this), at most you could say that the FBI investigators made some mistakes or cut some corners. And because this is all related to one person (Carter Page) who was already under investigation, in the context of a larger investigation that began well before Page became part of it, I don’t see how this one alleged misstep amounts to discrediting the entire Russia investigation.
2. For that matter, I don't see why the FBI’s use of the Steele dossier – even in part – would discredit the investigation as a pro-Democrat plot against Trump. Nunes and the GOP are claiming it proves bias because the dossier was funded by Democrats, but we already know that Steele was initially hired by a conservative publication, the Washington Free Beacon, which was anti-Trump. And Nunes’ own memo admits the FBI started the investigation months before Steele handed the dossier to them.
3. I think what interests me the most is that in order for the Nunes memo to be nearly as explosive a slam-dunk as Nunes, Trump and Fox News makes out, it requires one to buy into a specific narrative, as summed up nicely in this series of charts, as well as by the following summation by Asha Rangappa at Just Security):
In sum, the Nunes Memo reportedly alleges that at least a dozen FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors fabricated evidence, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit perjury, lucked out on being randomly assigned Judge Low Blood Sugar who looked the other way, and – coincidentally – ended up obtaining evidence that justified extending the initial FISA surveillance.
We’re also expected to believe this is all part of a Deep State™ operation by Democrats to overthrow the Presidency, even though the investigation began before Trump even won an election he was widely expected to lose (and did, if you go by the pop vote), and even though literally all players in the FBI side of the investigation are (or at least were appointed by) Republicans – to include James Comey, who apparently was so determined to overthrow Trump that he actually helped him win by announcing that he was reopening his investigation into Hillary’s emails in light of new evidence (which turned out to be nothing).
So, no. I prefer the simpler explanation: Trump and his minions are up to their necks in Russian ties, and at least some of them knowingly accepted help from the Russians to meddle in the election (or perhaps were blackmailed into it), and their only hope of getting away with it is by discrediting the entire FBI. I also think Trump is motivated as much by the sheer fact that proof of Russian interference would imply he couldn’t win without someone cheating on his behalf, and his ego simply won’t stand for it. I also suspect his proof lies in the notion that if the FBI was truly independent, Hillary would already be in Guantanamo Bay by now.
I don’t have any proof of that. But neither do the Deep State people. Anyway, that’s my prediction.
4. A quick word about the US Deep State™: bullshit.
5. A few more words about the US Deep State™: I think it’s bullshit in the sense that the term was coined to describe situations like the one in Turkey. The US is nowhere close to that situation except in the minds of paranoid Fox News personalities.
That said, I’m aware that The Left has their own version of the Deep State: the one in which intelligence and security agencies – the “permanent government” – have their own agenda, and have the ability to use their powers of secret surveillance to subvert democracy by secretly undermining an existing administration with “anonymous” leaks. Glenn Greenwald (who I usually agree with more often than not) has argued that the Trump/Russia scandal looks suspiciously like disinformation, that we shouldn't trust it at face value, and Democrats are enabling the Deep State simply because it's currently targeting the opposition.
The main difference: Trump/Hannity think (or pretend to think) the Deep State is a Democrat creation (probably by Obama) to subvert Republican power exclusively. Greenwald's version is that the only side the Deep State takes is its own, and that the real story isn’t that they’re taking aim at Trump, but the fact that they can do it at all. You can’t support them for doing it to Trump and ignore the fact that they could just as easily do it to Hillary, or Bernie, or anyone else.
I would agree that intel agencies have far more surveillance power than they should, and the potential for abuse is real. And we’ve seen what an FBI with a political agenda and free reign looks like (see: J Edgar Hoover). But again, none of this has achieved Erdogan-level Deep State. And we do have laws today that prevent any FBI director from being the next Hoover. In any case, I think this is a separate issue from the Trump/Russia investigation.
6. But as always, so what? Team Trump/Fox and their fans live in their own alt-reality where Obama and Hillary run the Deep State™ with the help of the Liberal Fake News Media (funded by George Soros) and are actively plotting to take over America and the world. It’s not original, but it’s a handy way to explain away anything negative about their man The Donald, and the Nunes memo SO proves that.
7. But then it could all be disinformation, couldn't it? The Russians, the CIA, the FBI, Fox News – it could all be run by Chinese hackers or a network of AI twitterbots some high school kid released as a prank. For all you know, I'm one of those bots and I autogenerated this just to mess with you.
Etc and so on.
Up from the deep.
This is dF
