No surprise here that the president is putting his tin-foil hat base above country. Donald Trump is set to release a set of talking points by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, despite pleading from both the president’s own Republican appointees at the FBI and DOJ that the talking points, according to the FBI specifically, have “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
First up in today’s roundup is The New York Times and its editorial on the GOP plot against the FBI:
So this is what a partisan witch hunt really looks like. [...] Reports suggest that the three-and-a-half-page document — produced by the staff of Representative Devin Nunes (R-White House), who somehow still leads the House Intelligence Committee despite his own record of shilling for President Trump, and who is supposed to be recused from these matters — has nothing to do with truth or accountability. Rather, it appears to be misleading propaganda from people who are terrified by the Russia investigation and determined to derail it by any means necessary. [...]
There’s so much deception and obfuscation going on here that it’s hard to know where to start.
Damon Linker takes on the GOP’s “conspiracy fetishists”:
It's hard to decide which option is more disturbing: the idea that congressional Republicans actually believe the FBI was doing the bidding of the Democratic Party by using opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign to get a FISA court to approve surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page — or that they're just pretending to believe it in order to whip the Republican electorate into a conspiracy-addled froth of indignation against the legitimacy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
In the end, it doesn't make much of a difference. Either way, the GOP has demonstrated that the transformation of the party that began with the rise of talk radio and Fox News in the 1990s has reached a kind of terminus. What was once a sober and serious center-right party is now an organization that actively spreads elaborate webs of lies and half-truths, schemes and plots about its political opponents, and even ostensibly nonpartisan civil servants, for the sake of stirring up anger and undermining the capacity for self-criticism within the Republican electorate.
Here’s great analysis over at The Nation by Bob Dreyfuss on this constitutional crisis:
With the imminent release of the jury-rigged “Nunes memo” and the resignation of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who had been under fire from the president, Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have expanded their all-out assault on the American system of justice, including the FBI, the Justice Department, the US intelligence community, and the Office of the Special Counsel. It’s an unprecedented attack on what Team Trump refers to as an imagined “Deep State,” a “secret society” within the FBI, and a conspiracy of judges, courts, and intelligence officials who have allegedly banded together to bring down his presidency.
Paul Waldman at The Week:
I'm fairly certain that the reason his lawyers are desperate to keep him from sitting down to answer Mueller's questions isn't that they think he's guilty (though he may be), but that you never know what dumb thing he'll say to indict himself. After all, we're talking about someone who went on national television and volunteered that he fired the director of the FBI in order to quash the Russia investigation, which was for all intents and purposes an admission that he had committed obstruction of justice.
So yes, in Trump's Washington the stupid starts at the top. But one might suspect that in the end, it will be only the facts that matter. Either Mueller will uncover hard evidence that crimes were committed, or he won't (though he has already obtained two guilty pleas). Either that evidence will show that there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, or it won't. No scandal-management strategy, whether shrewd or blockheaded, will make that much difference one way or the other.
The Washington Post’ s Eugene Robinson warns against picking a fight with the FBI:
Presidents don’t win fights with the FBI. Donald Trump apparently wants to learn this lesson the hard way.
Most presidents have had the sense not to bully the FBI by defaming its leaders and — ridiculously — painting its agents as leftist political hacks. Most members of Congress have also understood how unwise it would be to pull such stunts. But Trump and his hapless henchmen on Capitol Hill, led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have chosen the wrong enemy. History strongly suggests they will be sorry.
Over at The New York Times, Tim Weiner agrees:
He now stands on the verge of re-enacting the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon forced out his own attorney general and the next man in line in order to sack the special prosecutor investigating Watergate. Nixon’s willing executioner back in the October 1973 was the No. 3 man at Justice, the solicitor general Robert Bork. At the end of that fateful night, Nixon promised him the next seat on the Supreme Court. It worked out badly for all concerned — Nixon resigned anyway, and Bork’s actions were a major strike against him in his unsuccessful nomination to the court. [...]
The president has measured Mr. Mueller for the guillotine for months. As the bloodhounds close in on the Oval Office, he may sharpen his blade and place the prosecutor’s head on a pike. If so, he’ll have to confront the Constitution. And he’ll lose again.
On a final note, don’t miss this piece by Cheri Jacobus at USA Today tying in the GOP attempts to undermine the Russia investigation, sanctions on Russia and more:
While the U.S. intelligence community has confirmed Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, Trump stands alone in his denial of the breach and in his defense of Putin. CIA Director Mike Pompeo unequivocally asserts Russia will interfere in the congressional midterm elections later this year. The Trump White House and congressional Republicans seem unconcerned, or perhaps even copacetic with the intervention that will yield results in their favor. [...]
Putin’s KGB-inspired maneuvering of the United States via Donald Trump and the Republican Congress has all the earmarks of a carefully planned, professionally executed war game in which Trump, congressional Republicans and some in right wing media are his comrades. But it’s not a game. The United States is in trouble.