General Discussion

bigtree

(85,996 posts) Tue Jan 30, 2018, 12:08 AM Jan 2018

The 'memo' House republicans wrote and voted to 'release' is just another step on the rake

HuffPo :

Andrew McCabe, Comey’s former deputy, stepped down Monday after weeks of pressure from Trump and Republicans. Republicans have charged that McCabe was biased against the president because his wife ran for a Virginia state Senate seat as a Democrat, but FBI documents released earlier this month indicate he followed bureau recusal rules. The day after Trump fired Comey, the president called McCabe to complain about Comey being allowed to take a government-funded plane back to Washington, NBC reported Monday. When McCabe said he wasn’t asked to authorize the flight but would have approved it, Trump told McCabe to ask his wife — who lost her race for state Senate — how it feels to be a loser, and hung up the phone, according to NBC.

The president, Republicans in Congress, and the right-wing media have spun tales of a dark conspiracy involving Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, two FBI officials who were having an affair and exchanged text messages critical of Trump and other politicians from both parties. The evidence suggests Page and Strzok were actually driven more by loyalty to the FBI than partisan political considerations.

The memo the House voted to release Monday reportedly focuses on criticizing Rod Rosenstein, a Republican Trump appointee at the Justice Department who now has responsibility over the Mueller probe. The memo, The New York Times reported, accuses Rosenstein of approving an application to surveil a former Trump campaign official last spring. Trump has long resented Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel after Trump fired Comey. Trump reportedly considered firing Rosenstein last summer, but instead ordered Mueller’s firing — only to back away the decision after his lawyer threatened to quit.

The memo reportedly suggests that FBI agents obscured their reliance on a controversial dossier about Trump’s ties to Russia when they sought a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser. Republicans have long sought to discredit the dossier, which was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/release-memo-trump-mueller_us_5a6fa783e4b0a52682fecdc7?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

...these are all republican talking points, most of them already thoroughly refuted, dressed up in a partisan republican-written memo as some shockingly new evidence that's begging to be made public.

Not only is it going to be a huge flop, it's going to look to most of the public like just another republican stunt to cover for Trump. House republican are going to cement their role as fellow obstructionists of justice, along with Trump, in the minds of anyone paying attention.

... and, speaking of 'paying attention,' what better backdrop could republicans have chosen to bring all this up than the eve and day of the SOTU? I'm baffled why they think having everyone talking about republicans, Trump, Page, and Russia tomorrow, with 30 million or so Americans looking on, is a winning strategy, but hitting themselves in the head is what this crop of republicans do best.