On Monday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray both went to the White House to plead with administration officials not to release the classified “memo” churned up by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee in their effort to sabotage the Russia investigation.
Their pleas apparently fell on deaf ears.
“It will be released here pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it,” White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told Fox News Radio on Wednesday. On the House floor Tuesday night, President Trump reassured a Republican congressman that he was “100 percent” behind making the memo public.
This is where things get strange, in that “constitutional crisis” sort of strange. Because, having tried and failed to win its argument privately, with the White House and the president, the FBI has chosen to go over Trump’s head and argue its case directly to the American people.
"With regard to the House Intelligence Committee's memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it," the agency said Wednesday in a statement. "As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy."
Read that again: "... we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy." The concern is that once the memo is made public, the FBI would not be able to cite still-classified material that would be needed to confront and correct those inaccuracies, which it describes as intentional.
So it's going to get interesting. Last week, after the Department of Justice warned House Republicans that it would be "extremely reckless" to release the memo, President Trump reportedly went nuclear, frustrated that his own administration was putting national security above his political interests. So I would hate to be the one who has to tell him about the FBI's statement that contradicts him almost to his face. (Actually, it might be fun.)
It’s also interesting to note that U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, the author of the supposedly “earth-shaking” memo, was asked point blank by a House colleague last week whether he had secretly worked with the Trump White House in drafting the document. Nunes refused to address the question.
When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was later asked the same question, she too evaded a direct answer. “I just don't know the answer," she said. "I'm not aware of any conversations or coordination with Congressman Nunes."
We’ve been down this road before, of course. Early in the Trump administration, Nunes called a press conference to announce that a secret source had leaked him extremely damaging information about the Obama administration’s involvement in the Russia probe. The information was so damaging and so important, Nunes said, that he was about to take it to the White House to present it to the Trump administration personally.
As it later turned out, the Trump White House had actually worked with Nunes in cooking up the claim of illegal “unmasking” of intercepted conversations -- the whole thing was a fraud. National security experts who looked at Nunes’ claim of illegality -- both Republican and Democratic -- dismissed it as nonsense, and the hue and cry about an unmasking scandal fell silent. So you know those guys who go around setting fires, then play hero by reporting the fires to 911?
Yeah, Devin Nunes.
It’s hard to state with 100 percent certainty that this “memo” will turn out to be equally groundless, because it remains classified. Republican defenders of Trump are howling that the memo proves malfeasance by Rosenstein and others at the Department of Justice, that Rosenstein ought to be fired if not jailed, and that Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation has to be ended immediately.
As Sean Hannity ranted, “beyond any shadow of a doubt ... the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his band of Democratic witch hunters never should have been appointed and they need to be disbanded immediately.”
However, one of the few who have read the memo is House Speaker Paul Ryan, and he has a notably different take.
"I think Rod Rosenstein is doing a fine job. I see no reason why [Trump] should (fire him),” Ryan said Tuesday. He also defended Mueller’s investigation, saying it should be allowed to continue until it is finished.
Earlier, in a closed-door meeting with fellow House Republicans, Ryan had warned them not to overplay the memo or exaggerate the impact of its contents. Unfortunately for the GOP, that horse left the barn weeks ago and was last seen on Fox News screaming something about "worse than Watergate!," "people will go to jail!!" and "treason!"
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