The Nunes Memo Was An Absolute Lie

In the age of Trump, a decade’s worth of news seems to fill a week, but cast your mind back, if you can, to February 9th and the release of the Nunes memo. The memo alleged that the FBI was politically corrupt and had improperly used the DNC’s “Trump-Russia dossier,” provided by Fusion GPS, to get a FISA court to authorize a wiretap on Trump advisor Carter Page. Republicans further suggested that this undermines the legitimacy of Mueller’s Russia Investigation.

Saturday’s release of the Democratic rebuttal memo shows that nearly every part of that was a lie.

To be clear, neither the Justice Department, nor the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, nor the White House dispute the content of the Democratic memo. This is not a disagreement about the facts of what happened but about the political expediency of releasing them.

Why this matters

The Russia Investigation is a counter intelligence investigation. The United States was targeted for deliberate, political attack by a foreign intelligence agency. That operation is still on-going; the Russian government continues in its attempts to politically destabilize the United States.

This is gravely concerning stuff.

The FBI is the primary counter-intelligence agency of the US Government. Its job is to protect the United States from foreign intelligence operations. Attacking that agency undermines its ability to do its job and weakens the security of the United States.

What this means

The Republican interest in discrediting Mueller and the Russia Investigation is a political one. The investigation is making the Trump administration look bad and threatens to drag the Republican Congressional majority down with it. Republicans on the House Intelligence committee as well as Republicans in the White House were thus faced with a stark choice: protect the party or protect the country.

They chose the party.

That is what the release of the Democratic memo shows us: the Republican Party is willing to sacrifice national security for partisan advantage.

Tell Congress What You Think

Protecting Mueller and the FBI is going to become harder as indictments and charges continue to mount. You can tell Congress what you think about this or any other topic by texting RESIST to 50409. Or, if SMS isn’t your style, you can contact your government by talking to Resistbot on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or Twitter. Resistbot will deliver your messages and keep you up to date if the White House moves against Mueller or the FBI.

More on Russia, Mueller, and the FBI

Want to learn more about Russian hacking and the investigations into it? Resistbot has you covered.

• Telling Lies With The Truth
• Gunning for Mueller
• Fireproofing Mueller
• The Bipartisan Fight To Protect Robert Mueller