Review of the House Intelligence transcript from the vote to release:
Given that the Republican party itself doesn’t seem to agree much with the release, and the members of the Committee don’t seem too willing to defend it either, one does wonder what levers are being applied behind the scenes?
The White House doesn’t seem to have that much swing. Trump’s support of ol’ Grabby Hands in Alabama didn’t seem to help him at all, nor Trump’s support for Luther Strange before him.
It seems unlikely that Russia would have blackmail material on every Republican in the House Intelligence Committee.
It seems unlikely that Nunes would command such loyalty from those below him.
All I can think of is that someone big, like the Mercers, have gotten involved in trying to hamstring the investigation. Conceivably, the memo is a direct result of the UKIP, Nigel Farage, Cambridge Analytica, Russia, WikiLeaks conspiracy theory that Simpson was selling.
I’m not sure I’m willing to go down that road quite yet.
That memo is looking more and more dubious as time goes on. In particular the Wray statement.
I think the best you can hope for - “best”, being from the perspective of someone who wants the memo to be meaningful - is that it has something in it of value and interest. But the likelihood that the memo will be something that can be taken at face value seems very low.
Oh, I’ll go down that road: it’s entirely possible that some trail in the Russia investigation, if not an actual road, leads to the Mercers.
“Possible”. No idea of likelihood. And no idea what kind of road or trail it might be, except that it prolly involves money because that’s what the Mercers are all about: money.
50 quatloos says that by noon tomorrow, someone is saying that “it doesn’t matter because the Majority approved of what was sent, so who gives a fuck what the Dems think; rules are for losers” or something to that effect.
Given the extremity of the “secret society” distortion of Strzok’s one text, I’m not too hopeful. It sounds like everything in it will be true in a “technical” sense, just as it’s true that Strzok mentioned a secret society, but not true in a way that anyone could reasonably take at any value without a lot more information.
It there is one thing true in it, who is to know which but that is without having access to the raw, underlying sources?
Speaking of using leverage to force the group to vote for the memo, I do note that it’s immediately following that vote that Trey Gowdy decided to leave.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation, of course, but it’s curious.
Worth noting that Gowdy used to be a federal prosecutor. Maybe he has a hard time stabbing the very agency he used to position himself for public office in the back.
This doesn’t explain how anyone knew what was in the application for the FISA order. I’ve applied for countless search warrants. The application itself, with all of the probable cause, was sealed and not available to anyone until an indictment was returned. I understand that some members of Congress may be cleared to see the information the application was based on. But how do they know what part of that information was (or was not, as the case may be) included in the application? You have to know what the application contained to make a stink about what was omitted. Is there something fundamentally different about FISA warrants/orders?
This is speculation here, but it seems plausible that the details of FISA warrant applications may have been shown to the so-called “Gang of Eight” (link) which receive the most sensitive intelligence briefings, and of which Nunes is a part. Nunes then cherry-picks parts of that warrant that support his case, while the FBI is saying that it cannot fight back against the cherry-picking without risking other very sensitive intelligence sources and methods. It would also explain why it is frequently said that most House members cannot see the underlying intelligence, since only eight members of the House and Senate combined are allowed access to such sensitive matters.
A brilliant and insightful take on the latest…by way of our good friends at Crooks and Liars…
Devin Nunes’ ‘Memo’ Will Never, Ever See The Light Of Day
This reflects the view offered by one of our more brilliant and perceptive posters, and may therefore be taken as Gospel. Modesty forbids any further identification.
Ravenman has got it. Adam Schiff is a member of the Gang of Eight, and as such, he has legal access to the classified information. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Richard Burr and others also have such access – but they have not been allowed to see the Nunes memo.
Schiff publicly stated he has reviewed all the underlying classified information that supports the renewal of the FISA warrant that is the subject of the Nunes memo. He has also reviewed the memo. Based on those two reviews, he does have actual knowledge about what is misleading in the memo.