NOTE: Part of this diary is drawn from an earlier post I wrote on the decision by the GOP and the House Intelligence Committee to release a bogus memo containing evidence gathered from US intelligence sources...evidence that intelligence experts have warned could compromise sources and methods.
As the latest Devin Nunes effort to create another house of cards designed to help Trump escape the Mueller probe unfolds, one has to wonder at the role Paul Ryan is playing in all of this?
The Nunes effort is clearly aimed at trying to discredit Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general in charge of the Mueller probe (because of Jeff Sessions’ recusal as AG) and to further discredit the intelligence community as being run by a cabal of “deep state” Obama holdovers bent on invalidating the Trump presidency.
At the beginning of January Nunes got Speaker Ryan to call in Rosenstein and FBI director Wray and demand they turn over highly classified intelligence to his committee. Wray and Rosenstein immediately objected on grounds it could reveal sources and asked Ryan to limit the scope of Nunes’ demands.
Ryan ignored those objections and claims and backed Nunes on his demands anyway, despite the fact that Nunes was supposedly recused from involvement as chair of his committee on matters involving the Russian interference probe because of his initial shenanigans trying to assert that Obama staff had been trying to “unmask” Trump campaign members as working with Russia.
Further, the House Intelligence Committee’s GOP members last night voted to release the Nunes memo, while refusing to let intelligence experts vet the memo and explain why release of its contents could compromise sources and methods.
They also barred Schiff and his minority members’ request to release their own memo countering the GOP claims and adding details Nunes is conveniently leaving out to buttress his bogus claims. (Clearly such a counter document would make it clear just how the facts are being twisted by the GOP.)
“OK ,”said Wray and Rosenstein. “But the sources of the information you are demanding are so sensitive that we can only show it to Nunes, minority Committee chair Adam Schiff, and their top aides.”
Now Nunes is clearly violating that restriction, has sent the memo using the intelligence he and Ryan demanded to members of Congress and hopes the memo with its highly selective use of evidence can be used to claim Rosenstein and Wray had no justification for extending a long-standing FISA warrant on Trump administration advisor and probable Russian agent Carter Page. (Even as this was happening, Russian bot farms began driving the hashtag #releasethememo in an effort to push public demands for its release.)
Ryan is making no effort to rein in Nunes widespread distribution of the intelligence he demanded from the FBI in violation of the supposed limits. (Nunes and Ryan are now claiming there were no such restrictions and it isn’t clear whether there was any written documentation of the supposed agreement.)
- I have long argued that the GOP and Ryan knew the Russians were working to win the election for Trump. (Remember Ryan’s secretly recorded comments to a small group of GOP leaders when Kevin McCarthy joked that he felt Trump was being paid by the Russians: “What is said here stays here.”
- I continue to believe that party experts worked with Russian hackers to help craft and target the Facebook ads and Tweets crafted by the Russians in the final weeks of the election.
- I believe that the Mercer funded Cambridge Analytica organization, which played a role in helping Brexit supporters win a British referendum on withdrawal from the EU, also played an important role in working with the GOP and the Russians to help carefully target specific voter blocs they felt could be persuaded to vote for Trump in the final days of the campaign.
- The FBI is now investigating whether a Russian source funneled millions of dollars to the GOP and Trump campaign through contributions to the NRA. Further, I will argue that investigators are going to learn Russian funneling of campaign funding by laundering it through the NRA was only one of multiple paths to get the Trump campaign campaign funds it needed in the final weeks.
- The purpose of the Nunes memo seems clear: discredit Rosenstein by claiming he had no justification for seeking renewal of a FISA warrant that had been repeatedly renewed as required based on evidence Page was working as a Russian agent . Then use that discrediting to give Trump justification to dismiss Rosenstein and replace him with a toady who will cripple or kill Mueller’s probe. What the Nunes memo seems to ignore is that Page had been under FBI scrutiny since 2013. Rachel Maddow last night reported Page had been working with a Russian banker who was subsequently indicted and found guilty of trying to recruit US citizens as agents for Russian intelligence (Carter included) and who wound up spending 30 months in US prison. It was no wonder that fact, coupled with earlier intercepts showing Page in continued contacts with Russians as a Trump campaign advisor, led Rosenstein to authorize a normal 90-day renewal of an ongoing FISA warrant to monitor his contacts and communications with such sources.
Nunes (and clearly Ryan) want us to believe that Rosenstein was basing his request solely on the Steele dossier as a source of what he argues were bogus claims of Page’s involvement and that Rosenstein acted as part of a conspiracy to use “bogus” intelligence (e.g. the Steele dossier) to attack the Trump campaign and administration.
Nunes, Ryan, and by their silence and complicity, the entire Republican Party, are gutting law enforcement and intelligence and the Constitution to preserve their grip on the government and protect a President totally unfit to hold the office and totally corrupt.
Still a giant mystery is just why an obscure Republican congressman from a very conservative district in California suddenly became the point man for efforts to shield Trump. The only real reason would seem to be his chairmanship of the important House Intelligence Committee.
Nunes very quickly took the lead in his midnight run to the White House and claims that Democrats were “unmasking” Trump team members based on incidental intelligence intercepts in an effort to undercut Trump. (Those claims it turned out, were based on information supplied to Nunes by the White House.) That effort failed.
Then it was trying to discredit the Steele Dossier and a refusal to release transcripts of testimony from Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS about his group’s work, its clients and its findings (an effort undercut when Diane Feinstein released the Senate Committee’s transcript of a similar interview.)
Just who is Devin Nunes, and just what has he been doing for the past year, and why? Nobody yet seems to have really probed this question. Does he have secret ties to Russians? Why are his actions so closely paralleled by supporting actions from Russian bot sources and the right-wing media?
And what is Paul Ryan doing?
- He is clearly backing Nunes to the hilt.
- He is giving Nunes free rein to lead efforts to protect Trump.
- He is giving Nunes freee rein even though Nunes is supposedly recused from many of the activities he continues to undertake in pursuit of this effort.
- He is backing Nunes demands for VERY sensitive intelligence, and then backing Nunes claims that there was no agreement to limit sharing of the information on which the Nunes “memo” is based because of its sensitivity, even though Democrats argue otherwise.
- He is fine with Nunes’ committee’s refusal to allow the Democrats to release a counter to their memo.
- And he is fine with allowing Nunes and the GOP members of his committee to launch an investigation of the FBI without telling Democrats of their actions.
- He is standing by as Nunes pushes forward a clearly biased and selectively drafted memo using that intelligence.
- And his entire party is standing by, raising NO public objections to all of this...the risk to our intelligence systems, the efforts to weaken public trust of the FBI and intelligence and the continuing and repeated efforts to craft clearly bogus defenses of Trump, his campaign and administration in the face of mounting evidence of corruption, collusion, money laundering, and conspiracy with the Russians.
Paul Ryan clearly does not care and is clearly backing Devin Nunes’ frantic efforts to protect Trump at all costs.
Our democracy is in grave peril! Paul Ryan is complicit in it all!!!!