Bottom Line: The Nunes Memo Wasn't Meant to Win Over Everyone Just 34 Senators
Great insight from Max Boot:
,,,The Nunes memo is only the latest failed attempt to find evidence of anti-Trump bias at the FBI. A few weeks ago, Trump’s supporters latched onto a few critical text messages about the president written by agent Peter Strzok. Trump even said the texts were evidence of “treason.” It turns out, according to the Wall Street Journal, “Texts critical of Mr. Trump represent a fraction of the roughly 7,000 messages, which stretch across 384 pages and show no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump.” Far from being an anti-Trump conspirator, Strzok wrote the initial draft of the October 2016 Comey letter that helped sink the Clinton campaign.
None of this remotely supports the hyperbolic demands of Trump supporters who want the leaders of the Justice Department and FBI to be “taken out in cuffs.” If anyone is breaking the law here, it’s Trump with his attempted obstruction of justice.
But, specious as the attack on the FBI might be, there is good cause to fear that it is resonating with the only audience that matters to Trump. If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III delivers a scathing report on the president and if Democrats win the House in November, it’s almost certain the House will vote to impeach. But it takes 67 votes in the Senate to remove a president.
The case against the FBI that’s being assembled by Trump and his minions is not designed to convince dispassionate observers. It’s only supposed to give the thinnest of cover to true believers — and at least 34 senators — to do what they are predisposed to do anyway, i.e., protect the president at all costs.
The Nunes memo is a modern-day version of the jury nullification that O.J. Simpson’s legal team sought to inspire. (I’m grateful to Eric Felten of the Weekly Standard for the analogy.) Johnnie Cochran and company spun an elaborate conspiracy theory about how the Los Angeles Police Department supposedly framed their client. They were helped by minor procedural errors in the handling of evidence and by previous racist remarks from one of the detectives, just as Trump is helped by minor FBI missteps such as the Strzok texts and the alleged failure to alert a judge about Steele’s Democratic Party funding.
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2018/02/03/saturday-cartoon-characters-open-thread-bad-craziness/#comment-6741160
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OJ Trumpson?
