thoughts on this? Slate "The Nunes Memo Is a Big Win for Donald Trump"

[NRaleighLiberal]

(PLEASE don't just react to the headline - read the article - then comment)....I am still trying to sort out all of this (rather unsuccessfully)


It’s incomprehensible and deeply misleading and it will give Trump the tools he needs to stymie the Mueller investigation.
By DAHLIA LITHWICK


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-nunes-memo-is-a-big-win-for-donald-trump.html

The Devin Nunes memo is, as was widely expected, a dud. It reveals nothing new, and answers none of the crucial questions raised by former law enforcement officials who have said there is nothing in this report that warrants its release. Indeed, in an opening missive that truly puts the “cover” in cover letter, White House counsel Don McGahn doesn’t even bother to respond to the arguments put forth by the Justice Department, which strongly urged that the memo not be released and cautioned that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to do so without first giving the DOJ and FBI the opportunity to review it. The FBI similarly issued a stunning public warning that it had “grave concerns” about the accuracy of the memo. And yet, McGahn’s letter detailing the reasons for the declassification simply asserts that the president took this “input” into consideration and opted to release the unredacted memo nonetheless, alleging that named officials at the FBI and DOJ were biased against the Trump campaign and conspired to spy on it illegally.

The memo—which centers on the claim that the FBI omitted “material and relevant information” in obtaining a FISA warrant to surveil Trump crony Carter Page was obtained—proves Page was under FISA surveillance for about a year. As David French points out, it’s now clear that the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, which started in July 2016, “began before the FISA applications against Page.”

The memo also notes the warrant was re-upped three times by an authorizing judge who would have had to determine that each successive warrant provided the government with intelligence that substantiated the original allegation that the target was engaged in clandestine intelligence activity on behalf of a foreign power. It also faults the handlers of the Steele dossier for leaking to the media even as it levels no claims that the substance of the Steele dossier is false. It merely states that the dossier’s purveyors were biased, which is not disqualifying in seeking a warrant.

What is the point of dramatically releasing a document that will prove nothing to anyone, except the handful of people who can—by reading every fourth letter therein, and filtering the rest of it through the decoder ring they retrieved from the Comet Ping Pong basement laboratory—see in all this a nefarious conspiracy by largely Republican leadership to discredit Donald Trump in the months prior to the presidential election?


snip

much more at the link - thoughts on this???


very last paragraph

If the real, real long game here is to create just enough chaos and distraction to lead citizens to wonder whether this last action represents the death of constitutional democracy, this latest act is a big win from House Republicans and Donald Trump. Robert Mueller is just fractionally less safe than he was on Thursday, the country is fractionally less confident in the independence and efficacy of the national intelligence apparatus, and everyone is slightly more baffled that something as stupid as the Nunes memo serves to achieve those ends. In a Zeno’s paradox of constitutional meltdown, another nothing just inched us closer to a really big something. But nobody knows if we will ever get there.

[unblock]

1. "a zenos paradox of constitutional meltdown"

an intriguing turn of phrase.

and scary, too.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. that was the key line, I thought.

[Pachamama]

2. I disagree with the premises of this argument....

I think the "Nunes Memo aka Trump version" will be Exhibit A in the charges of Obstruction of Justice Case against Donald J. Trump....

[lagomorph777]

4. That headline was clearly not written by the article's author.

It completely reverses the text of the article.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. Yes and no - I think a point was being made that the more confusion - which is the whole trump

modus - the more he can just confound everything into an impenetrable (long lasting) mess.

[triron]

8. I think you are trying to give Trump way more credit

than he deserves. Like someone said on CNN to Jake Tapper (about the memo)
"it's not even to the level of the 5th grade"

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. I am giving him no credit. What I mean is that his supporters - and the media -

can't fight through or see through his natural lack of any organization, thought, or creativity whatsoever.

I give trump zero credit for anything at all. I despise him.

But our incredibly polarized times, mostly untalented media and right wing noise machine seem to be perfectly timed for this idiot to be able to do the damage he does.

[marybourg]

11. They have not been written by

journalists for several decades, but lately they have become more and more disassociated from the content and more and more written only to cause tumult and outrage.

[Bragi2]

6. I agree, chaos and distortion help Trump

And this memo creates chaos and distortion. It will be with us for some time.

It's a Benghazi -- a false story that feeds the authoritarian narrative and agenda, and will never go away.

[Iliyah]

7. There is no confusion

except on the part of the conservatives who are always confused because everybody don't think just like them. People are really getting tired of them and t-rump and crew are on their way out.

[Yavin4]

9. Did Cox's rejection of Nixon's offer of transcripts for his tapes justify firing Cox?

No. It did not.

[Sophia4]

12. One read of the Wikipedia page on Page will assuage anyone's fears.

And then, Google the names of the five members of Trump's foreign policy team during his campaign.

Michael Flynn -- has plead guilty to charges.

Papadapoulos -- has plead guilty to charges.

Carter Page -- was placed under surveillance because of his close ties to Russia, close in many respects.

Two other less well known men who were apparently chosen for their experience or expertise on Muslim terrorists and who deserve to be studied more closely.

So five people were on his foreign policy advisory team, and three of them had strange affiliations with Russia. If one of the members of his team had been close to Russia, that would be not such a big deal. But Trump's foreign policy team was very strange. No experts on Japan or from what I can tell, China or Germany or France or the Netherlands. How did Trump choose that bunch? Someone should ask one of Trump's spokespersons.

Or am I wrong about the names? Were there more advisors say on Norway or Africa or other countries. How about an expert on Mexico or South America?

This is the real story here in my view. Trump's foreign policy advisory commission of which Carter Page was a member was strange. But maybe I'm wrong about who was on it. Maybe I missed some names. Help?

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. I think the main objective was to give congressional Republicans excuses for not impeaching

and being able to hold on to their base's votes in November. It doesn't have to be a good argument that convinces people willing to reason it through, or to look for and listen to other evidence, just the willing idiots who already want to think "Trump and the rest of the Republican party are my guys, and you can't trust the people who've said they have evidence of crimes". This may be enough for that.