The Commentariat -- February 4, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Elise Viebeck & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee dissented Sunday from President Trump's view that corruption has poisoned the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In a sign of a growing rift within the House GOP, four members of the panel dismissed the idea pushed by Trump and other Republicans that a controversial memo criticizing how the FBI handled elements of its Russia probe undermines the investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III into possible coordination between Trump associates and the Kremlin. The memo's release Friday by the Intelligence Committee has raised fears Trump will fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the probe. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who helped draft the memo, said Trump should not fire Rosenstein and rejected the idea that the document has bearing on the investigation. 'I actually don't think it has any impact on the Russia probe,' Gowdy, who also chairs the House Oversight Committee, said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to Trump, he had only "a few hours" to read the memo, so he has had to rely on Sean Hannity to find out what it says. (In the linked commentary, Jonathan Chait doubts that "a few hours" alone with a memo is any guarantee he Trump would read it. "(The television isn't going to watch itself)," Chait explains. ...

... Shane Harris: Former CIA Director "John Brennan accused Rep. Devin Nunes (R.-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, of selectively releasing information to accuse law enforcement officials of improperly obtaining a warrant to monitor the communications of a former Trump campaign adviser. 'It's just appalling and clearly underscores how partisan Mr. Nunes has been,' Brennan said in an interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'He has abused the chairmanship of [the Intelligence Committee],' Brennan said.... He emphasized that the dossier played 'no role whatsoever' in an assessment by all U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. He added that intelligence agencies were also developing their own information on Russia's interference 'on multiple fronts' and that the FBI had its own sources of information." ...

... Molly McKew in Politico Magazine: "Russian bots and their American allies gamed social media to put a flawed intelligence document atop the political agenda.... The #releasethememo campaign came out of nowhere. Its movement from social media to fringe/far-right media to mainstream media so swift[ly] that both the speed and the story itself became impossible to ignore. The frenzy of activity spurred lawmakers and the White House to release the Nunes memo, which critics say is a purposeful misrepresentation of classified intelligence meant to discredit the Russia probe and protect the president." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: That is to say, having helped elect Trump, Putin/Russia is now helping to protect him from U.S. law enforcement agencies. Think about that. There is a reason the Founders went out of their way to try to protect the presidency from foreign coups (the president & veep must be native-born). See also Emoluments Clause (a/k/a Title of Nobility Clause). Unfortunately, the Founders could not foresee bots. So congratulations! Many of you have now become subjects of the nation ostensibly ruled by Prince Donaldovich von Putin von Clownstick. The rest of you will be deported. ...

... Niraj Warikoo of the Detroit Free Press reports on what it's like for one 39-year-old family man to be deported from the U.S. to a country where he hasn't lived since he was 10 years old.

*****

The Gray Lady Removes Her Dainty Gloves. Sharon LaFraniere, et al., of the New York Times: "The war between the president and the nation's law enforcement apparatus is unlike anything America has seen in modern times.... The president has engaged in a scorched-earth assault on the pillars of the criminal justice system in a way that no other occupant of the White House has done. The president's focus on a memo drafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee and released on Friday reflected years of conspiracy-minded thinking by Mr. Trump.... At the start of his administration, Mr. Trump targeted the intelligence community for his criticism. But in recent months, he has broadened the attacks to include the sprawling federal law enforcement bureaucracy that he oversees, to the point that in December he pronounced the F.B.I.'s reputation 'in tatters' and the 'worst in history.'" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Simple mental acuity test notwithstanding, this is the New York Times' news arm -- not the editorial pages -- announcing the POTUS* is nuts. See also Emily Cochrane's story linked late yesterday morning. She pulled no punches, either, on Trump's Lie-o'-the-Day, even tho it was the sort of lie (one in which a measure of judgment is needed as opposed to a cold hard fact, like how many people showed up at an event) to which the paper would have applied the he-said/she-said standard a couple of years back. ...

... Renato Mariotti in a New York Times op-ed: "... Mr. Trump's approval of the release of the [Nunes] memo and his comments that releasing it could make it easier for him to fire [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein could help Robert Mueller, the special counsel, prove that Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, with a 'corrupt' intent -- in other words, the intent to wrongfully impede the administration of justice -- as the law requires.... The memo also offers the outlines of a broader probable cause case against [former Trump campaign aide Carter] Page.... The fact that the warrant was renewed three times indicates that the F.B.I. obtained useful intelligence each time -- a judge wouldn't have approved a renewal if the prior warrant came up empty.... Because the allegations in the memo are legally irrelevant, I would be surprised if the memo was more than a short-lived publicity stunt." ...

... Massimo Calabresi & Alana Abramson of Time: "Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by Time that raises new questions about the extent of Page's contacts with the Russian government over the years. The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page. 'Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,' the letter reads.... 'I just came to see him as a kook,' the editor says." ...

Until now, we could only really accuse House Republicans of ignoring the President's open attempts to block the Russia investigation. But with the release of the Nunes memo ... we can only conclude that House Republicans are complicit in the effort to help the President avoid accountability for his actions and the actions of his campaign. -- Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), in a rebuttal to the Nunes memo ...

... Mike Memoli of NBC News: "NBC News has exclusively obtained a six-page rebuttal to the Nunes memo from Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, which was to be circulated to all House Democrats on Saturday.... Nadler is one of the small number of lawmakers who has viewed the highly sensitive documents that are the basis of Nunes' memo. The rebuttal focuses on four key points.... That [Rep. Devin] Nunes' memo fails to demonstrate that the government lacked enough evidence beyond a dossier from former British spy Christopher Steele to obtain a FISA warrant on [Carter] Page. That Steele's expertise on Russia and organized crime would have outweighed any concerns a FISA court would have had about the funding of Steele's work by partisan actors -- funding sources that Steele may not have even known about. That Nunes' memo 'provides no credible basis whatsoever' for removing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.... That Nunes' memo shows that Republicans 'are now part and parcel to an organized effort to obstruct' [Robert] Mueller's probe." Unlike the Democratic House Intelligence Committee's rebuttal, Nadler's rebuttal does not contain classified information. ...

     ... A pdf of Nadler's memo -- which he describes as a "legal analysis" -- is here. ...

... Rats Clinging to a Stinking Ship. Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "This was the week when the Republican Party finally went all in with President Trump.... The turnaround in the relationship came from two directions.... Big majorities of Republicans said they approved of the job Trump was doing, and his personal ratings were far better than those of [Paul] Ryan, [Mitch] McConnell or any other prominent Republican leader.... The other major turning point came from the inside, with the passage of the tax cut in late December.... The Nunes memo moves the relationship to a different place. Its release puts much of the Republican leadership fully behind the president in his efforts to discredit the Russia investigation.... The fact that the memo's release came with the imprimatur of the House speaker and many other leading Republicans only adds weight to what has become a Trump-led effort to muddy the eventual conclusions of the investigation." ...

... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "A federal judge told the Department of Justice to explain why the release of the House Intelligence Committee's memo today shouldn't force investigators to acknowledge the existence of more records related to foreign surveillance.... The Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed by the James Madison Project and USA Today reporter Brad Heath in April, sought records from the FBI of FISA applications and authorizations for surveillance of the Trump Organization..., Donald Trump, his campaign and associated people. A filing from USA Today's lawyers Friday pointed out that the ate-October 2016 issuance of the FISA warrant on [Carter] Page matched the month that Trump claims the Obama administration started wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower in New York." ...

Katie Rogers & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times introduce us to the "real author" of the Nunes memo -- Kashyap Patel, a 37-year-old lawyer & screw-up. Patel, for instance, was apparently the catalyst for a federal judge's issuing this "Order of Ineptitude." Mrs. McC: Are we surprised that Devin Nunes picks/attracts the same quality of staff our dear leader hires? ...

... A Note of Caution. Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker: "In the context of FISA, it wouldn't have taken much to get a warrant, with or without [Christopher] Steele, especially given [Carter] Page's business relations in Russia. Although the memo notes that the application was one involving 'probable cause,' under Title I of FISA, rather than the even more lax Section 702 of Title VII, one problem that the memo does illustrate is how easy it is to get permission to spy on Americans; the FISC is non-adversarial and almost never says no. And ... whatever one thinks of Page, any American with whom he had been in contact might have been drawn into the surveillance, too. (The government calls this 'incidental' contact.) Republicans, including [Devin] Nunes, have not been as interested in abuses of FISA that do not involve their President, and recently passed on a chance to reform the standards of Section 702, in particular. (Many Democrats have been absent, too.) But critics of Trump should also not fall into the trap of elevating that process.... Otherwise, they risk landing in the same territory as Trump, who, in a tweet on Thursday, claimed that the 'investigative process' had once been 'sacred' -- until it was directed at him." ...

... Part of the Problem. Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "Hannity summarized the Nunes memo for his 4 million viewers. Every word is a lie." Most Hannity fans will take him at his word & accept his "summary." Of the few who bother to read the memo, some won't understand it, & some will think they're just not good enough at reading "legal documents" (of which Nunes' memo is not one) to cull from it whatall Hannity has "explained." Not a single Hannity viewer will realize the memo is just smoke-&-mirrors hackery.

Emoluments. Cristina Alesci & Curt Devine of CNN: "An employee for the federal agency supervising the lease for the Trump hotel in Washington spent more than $900 for a stay there last year, according to a document reviewed by CNN -- the first publicly know movement of federal taxpayer dollars into the highly scrutinized business. The federal employee worked for the General Services Administration, the agency which supervises the lease of the Old Post Office building to the Trump Organization. The GSA reimbursed the employee for a majority of the charges, which was in line with the agency's policy on per diem expenses, according to a person familiar with the document.... Multiple other federal agencies have paid Trump companies for lodging or services since Trump's inauguration. CNN previously reported that the US Secret Service paid the Mar-a-Lago Club $63,700 between roughly February and April of 2017. The payments were categorized as hotel costs on government expense forms. In September, the Washington Post credited Property of the People for obtaining a receipt from the US Coast Guard that showed Mar-a-Lago billed the government $1,092 for a two-night stay. That charge was listed as a rack rate, which usually refers to a non-discounted price." Donald Trump can profit personally from these payments....

The Best People, Ctd.

... Juliet Eilperin & Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "The White House will withdraw its controversial nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett White.... Hartnett White, who once headed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and now serves as a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation..., [testified] in the fall before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ... that while humans probably contribute to current warming, 'the extent to which, I think, is very uncertain.'... Just days before she testified, the federal government released its Climate Science Special Report, a collaboration among more than a dozen agencies that found 'no convincing alternative explanation' other than human influence for the warming the world has experienced in the past 70 years.... In November, more than 300 scientists from around the country signed a letter urging the Senate to reject her confirmation.... Before being nominated, Hartnett White criticized the 2007 Supreme Court decision finding that the federal government had the legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.... In 2016, she described carbon dioxide -- emissions of which rank as one of the primary ways human activity contributes to climate change -- as a key asset to the planet." ...

... Aaron Davis & Jack Gillum of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration's nominee to coordinate billions of dollars in assistance to migrants around the world has suggested in social-media posts that Islam is an inherently violent religion and has said Christians in some cases should receive preferential treatment when resettling from hostile areas. In tweets, social media posts and radio appearances reviewed by The Washington Post, Ken Isaacs, a vice president of the Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse, made disparaging remarks about Muslims and denied climate change -- a driving force behind migration, according to the agency the State Department has nominated him to lead.... Isaacs was announced Thursday as the Trump administration's pick to become director general of the United Nations' International Organization for Migration, or IOM.... Trump's pick could be at risk of being the first U.S. nominee since the late 1960s to lose an election by the group's voting members, according to several people involved in international relief coordination."

The Party of Debt, Ctd. Heather Long of the Washington Post: "The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year -- Trump's first full year in charge of the budget. That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017. Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year. Treasury [Mrs. McC: that would be Steve Mnuchin] mainly attributed the increase to the 'fiscal outlook.' The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt. In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law.... This is the first time borrowing has jumped this much (as a share of GDP) in a non-recession time since Ronald Reagan was president.... Trump didn't mention the debt -- or the ongoing budget deficits -- in his State of the Union address.... Investors are concerned about all the additional borrowing and the likelihood of higher inflation, which is why the interest rates on U.S. government bonds hit the highest level since 2014. That, in turn, partly drove the worst weekly sell-off in the stock market in two years.... [Trump] campaigned on reducing the national debt." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The experts attributed the U.S. stock market plunge last week largely to a low unemployment rate here & abroad, which would lead to higher production costs. My guess is the freefall had more to do with the ballooning U.S. debt -- the opposite of what should happen in a strong economy. Once again, Mnuchin & Wall Street are facing the fact that trickle-down economics is a con -- even if they won't say so. ...

... The Costco Bump. Thanks, Paul! Avi Selk of the Washington Post: "... Saturday morning, by way of good news [about the GOP tax heist, Paul] Ryan's Twitter account shared a story about a secretary taking home a cool $6 a month in tax savings. 'A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.'... The tweet was deleted within hours, probably guaranteeing it will never be forgotten, and leaving people baffled as to why Ryan ever thought it would make a good advertisement for the tax plan's supposed middle-class benefit. It's true that the bill is stingy to people at the bottom of the pay scale. In fact, the average tax break for someone making $25,400 a year or less happens to be $60 -- the exact price of a Gold Star Costco membership. And it's true that the bill showers money on those in the top income brackets. But between these extremes, millions of workers should see substantial cuts, ranging into the hundreds and thousands of dollars." Twitterworld turned up its sarcasm dial. See also Akhilleus's comment in yesterday's thread.

News Ledes

CNN: "Two people were killed in a crash involving a freight train and an Amtrak passenger train headed to Miami early Sunday in South Carolina, authorities said. In addition to the fatalities, more than 50 people were injured, according to Derrec Becker of South Carolina Emergency Management Division. Amtrak Train 91 was involved in the crash with a CSX freight train about 2:35 a.m. in Cayce. The lead engine and some passenger cars derailed, Amtrak said in a statement." ...

... Washington Post Update: "An Amtrak train en route from New York to Miami collided with a CSX freight train and derailed near Columbia, S.C., early Sunday, leaving two dead and 116 injured, police and Amtrak officials said. The crash occurred at 2:35 a.m. in Cayce, S.C., about four miles southwest of Columbia, causing the lead engine and 'some passenger cars' to derail, Amtrak said in a statement. There were eight crew members and approximately 139 passengers on board, Amtrak said. The CSX train was empty, according to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R). The two people killed were Amtrak employees, the railroad said. The Lexington County coroner identified the victims as the train's engineer, Michael Kempf, 54, of Savannah, Ga., and conductor Michael Cella, 36, of Orange Park, Fla." ...

... New York Times Update 2: "Amtrak suffered its third high-profile crash in less than seven weeks early Sunday when a passenger train traveling on the wrong track slammed into a stationary freight train in South Carolina, killing two people and intensifying worries about the safety and reliability of passenger rail service in the United States. Although the crash was the subject of a federal inquiry on Sunday, Amtrak's chief executive, Richard H. Anderson, said that a signal system had been down and that dispatchers from another company, CSX, were routing trains at about the time of the wreck. The passenger train, heading south, was diverted onto a rail siding where, while apparently traveling below the speed limit, it crashed into a CSX train that had been loaded with automobiles."

The Commentariat -- February 3, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: President "Trump, who is in Florida for the weekend, took to Twitter to proclaim his innocence and denounce the investigation a day after the release of the highly contentious classified memo, which he had authorized to be made public. The document claimed that top law enforcement officials had abused their powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who was suspected of being an agent of Russia.... [Trump tweeted,] 'This memo totally vindicates "Trump" in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!'... The memo, while trying to paint the origins of the Russia investigation as tainted, did nothing to clear Mr. Trump of either collusion or obstruction -- the lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. The memo in fact undermined Republicans' effort to cast doubt on the roots of the investigation by confirming that the inquiry was already underway when law enforcement officials obtained a warrant from a secret intelligence court to conduct surveillance on Mr. Page." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Cochrane's report is extraordinary. Right near the top, she provides a jarring correction to Trump's false assertions. Not he said/she said but he-said/he-lied. I've seen this kind of reporting happen before in a major media outlet. And then I've seen a correction. Let's see if Cochrane's accurate reporting stands.

Rebecca Morin of Politico: "The Department of Justice on Friday evening filed a motion seeking to dismiss a civil suit former top Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort brought against special counsel Robert Mueller. According to the DOJ's motion, Manafort alleged in his civil suit that 'the Acting Attorney General's order directing the Special Counsel to investigate certain matters exceeds the authority provided by the Department of Justice's Special Counsel regulations.' In addition, he claimed the indictment against him 'exceed the Special Counsel's authority under the Acting Attorney General's order.'... Department of Justice civil division lawyers defending Mueller's office and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said: 'These claims lack merit.'"

Victoria Guida of Politico: "The Federal Reserve took action against Wells Fargo for the first time in connection with the massive fake accounts scandal and other customer abuses that have been uncovered at the giant bank since 2016. In an unprecedented enforcement action announced Friday evening -- just as Janet Yellen closed out her final day as Fed chair -- the central bank said it will prevent the San Francisco-based lender from growing any larger than it was at the end of 2017 until it improves its governance and risk management. Wells Fargo will also replace three current board members by April and a fourth board member by the end of the year. The members were not named."

*****

Your Friday Afternoon DocuDud

Adam Goldman, et al., of New York Times: "House Republicans released a disputed memo on Friday compiled by congressional aides that accused the F.B.I. and Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. The memo, which has prompted a political firestorm, also criticizes information used by law enforcement officials in their application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page, and names the senior F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who approved the highly classified warrant." (This is the same link as appeared yesterday under Eileen Sullivan's byline.)

     ... Here's a pdf of the memo, along with an authorizing letter from White House counsel Don McGahn. ...

... Here's an annotated version, by Aaron Blake of the Washington Post. ...

... President Trump reveals he has no idea what's going on:

... Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "Asked at the White House if he will now fire [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein -- a precursor to firing or constraining Mueller -- Trump said Friday, 'you figure that one out.'"

... Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, whom the Republican majority on the committee will not yet allow to release a rebuttal memo, have nonetheless written a public response to the release of the Nunes memo: "The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process. As the Minority memo makes clear, none of this is true. The FBI had good reason to be concerned about Carter Page and would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA warrant.... The DOJ appropriately provided the court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia's election interference, including evidence that Russian agents courted another Trump campaign foreign adviser, George Papadopoulos." It goes on. ...

... Oops! Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials.... A now-declassified Republican memo alleged that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was duped into approving the wiretap request by a politicized FBI and Justice Department.... But its central allegation -- that the government failed to disclose a source's political bias -- is baseless, the officials said." ...

... Oops! Karen Tumulty & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Though President Trump and his allies hope that the controversial release of a GOP-written memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI will tarnish the legitimacy of the entire Russia probe, that argument may be undercut by a single sentence buried near the end of the four-page document. It confirms for the first time that the event that set the FBI's counterintelligence investigation in motion was not the surveillance of Trump adviser Carter Page -- a subject upon which most of the memo dwells -- but rather that it was opened as the result of information the bureau had received about ... George Papadopoulos.... 'The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok,' the memo noted in its final paragraph.... Papadopoulos appears nowhere in the 16 reports that Steele wrote between June and December 2016 that are now known collectively as the Steele dossier." ...

... Matt Ford of the New Republic: "Only in the memo's final paragraph do its authors acknowledge that [George] Papadopoulos's loose lips sparked the FBI probe. They also note that information from Papadopoulos also made its way into the FISA application targeting [Carter] Page, but don't explain further. Instead, the memo pivots to the texts between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page [no relation to Carter!], a frequent topic of chatter in conservative media. Trump-aligned outlets often describe their conversations as evidence of an internal FBI conspiracy against the president. But the Wall Street Journal reviewed more than 7,000 text messages between them and reported on Friday that it found 'no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump.'... The memo's authors apparently intended to suggest that the dossier's dramatic allegations had been debunked. But 'minimally corroborated' indicates that the FBI was able to find evidence supporting at least some of the dossier's contents. In essence, Trump declassified a document attacking the Steele dossier that also undercuts his political defenses against it." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: There's much more to Ford's analysis, including a humorous lede: "It would be easy to compare Congressman Devin Nunes's release of a declassified memo on purported surveillance abuses to Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault. But this would be extremely unfair to Geraldo, who didn't know ahead of time that it would be empty." ...

... JeffBo Straddles the Fence. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "In a statement issued shortly after the memo's release, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions acknowledged GOP concerns about Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials' actions, but said he remained confident in the agency's employees.... Sessions said he would ensure the DOJ addresses the concerns raised in the memo, which accuses FBI and Justice Department officials of misusing their authority to obtain a secret surveillance warrant on Carter Page.... 'Accordingly, I will forward to appropriate DOJ components all information I receive from Congress regarding this,' he said. 'I am determined that we will fully and fairly ascertain the truth....'" ...

     ... Daily Beast: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday went off-script during a speech to praise Rod Rosenstein shortly before the release of a GOP-authored memo reportedly targeting the deputy attorney general. During his remarks at a Department of Justice event on sex-trafficking issues, Sessions thanked Rosenstein and Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, saying, 'Those two -- Rod and Rachel -- are Harvard graduates, they're experienced lawyers. Rod had 27 years in the department. Rachel's had a number of years in the department previously and so they both represent the kind of quality and leadership that we want in the department.'" ...

... Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also issued a statement: "The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests -- no party's, no president's, only Putin's. The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia's ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller's investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation's elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin's job for him." ...

... Jen Kirby of Vox: "Former FBI director James Comey -- who's been known to subtweet the Trump administration since he went public on Twitter -- reacted with a scoff. 'That's it?' Comey wrote. 'Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.'... Others familiar with the intelligence community have echoed that sentiment, arguing the release of the memo needlessly undermines the government's intelligence-gathering capabilities beyond the Russia investigation -- namely clandestine agencies' ability to recruit informants and sources." ...

... Spencer Ackerman: "'Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information,' the memo claims, referring to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Asked if that was a true representation, a source familiar with McCabe's testimony responded: '100% not.' A senior Democratic House intelligence committee official agreed." ...

... Bryan Logan of Business Insider: "... Devin Nunes admitted on Friday that he did not view the underlying intelligence on which he based a memo that accuses the FBI and the Justice Department of improperly surveilling Trump associates during the 2016 election. Hours after the memo came out on Friday, Nunes gave an interview on Fox News during which anchor Bret Baier asked him if he wrote the memo. 'Yes,' Nunes replied, saying other Republican lawmakers, like House Oversight Committee chair Trey Gowdy, also contributed. 'Did you read the actual FISA applications,' Baier asked.... 'No, I didn't,' Nunes said, before adding that Gowdy was part of a designated group that reviewed the intelligence, took notes, and reported it back to committee members." ...

     ... Devin Isn't Done. Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "In a Fox News interview on Friday, Representative Devin Nunes of California ... said his panel was still proceeding with a separate investigation. He hinted that it focused on the State Department's role in the Russia investigation during the Obama administration.... [AND there's this.] Mr. Trump could have more ammunition in the coming weeks as the Justice Department's inspector general finishes a report widely expected to be critical of the F.B.I.'s handling of the final months of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. As part of that inquiry, Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general, has uncovered text messages between two F.B.I. officials working on that case and also the Russia investigation in which they express intense dislike for Mr. Trump. Mr. Horowitz is expected to reserve particularly harsh criticism for the two officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page." ...

There Must Be a Pony:

     ... Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said on Friday that the House intelligence memo on alleged FBI malfeasance showed 'clear and convincing evidence of treason' by law enforcement officials, despite lingering concerns in the intelligence community over its credibility.... Gosar, in a statement, blasted the FBI's use of a surveillance warrant to gather information about a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.... 'The full-throated adoption of this illegal misconduct and abuse of FISA by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein is not just criminal but constitutes treason,' Gosar wrote in a statement[, citing the Nunes memo as evidence]." ...

     ... Wonder Where Goser Got His Unhinged Ideas. Joseph Wulfsohn of Mediaite: Friday night, Sean "Hannity said that Former FBI Director James Comey, Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were 'all complicit' for approving surveillance on Carter Page. 'The FBI misled and purposefully deceived a federal court while using an unverified, completely phony opposition research bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton to spy on an opposition campaign during a presidential election!' Hannity exclaimed. 'Now that type of abusive power, that type of corruption, that shredding of the Constitution -- it is unprecedented in American history.'" ...

... Matt Zapotosky & Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post provide some background on Bruce Ohr, who shows up as another nefarious character in Devin Nunes' spy novel memo. Looks as if the DOJ has demoted Ohr twice because of his tangential association with Fusion GPS. ...

... Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "House Republicans and their allies have long argued that the House memo released Friday would demonstrate that the Trump-Russia investigation had its roots in an FBI fraud. But the Republican memo doesn't support that theory, even if everything alleged in it is true. (And Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department insist that much in the memo is deeply misleading.)... As the memo makes clear, the Mueller investigation did not grow out of the dossier, and the memo sheds no light on what role, if any, the dossier has played in the special counsel's inquiry."

... There's No There There. Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "... there is only one conclusion a fair reader [of the Nunes memo] could draw: There is absolutely nothing here. There is no proof in the memo that the FBI is biased against Trump, no proof of abuse of surveillance powers by the FBI, and no proof that the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia is fundamentally flawed. The memo is a piece of partisan spin, and not a particularly compelling one at that." Beauchamp compares the "grandiose" claims in the memo to the paucity of evidence supporting those claims. ...

... Quinta Jurecic, et al., of Lawfare cover most of the bases in their analysis of the Nunes memo. Here's something that may not have got enough attention: "To the extent the complaint is that the FBI relied on a biased source in [Christopher] Steele, the FBI relies every day on information from far more dubious characters than former intelligence officers working for political parties. The FBI gets information from narco-traffickers, mobsters and terrorists." The lawyers' overall conclusion is something that party leaders like Paul Ryan (and of course President Disgraceful) should have known, but don't know or care: "At the end of the day, the most important aspect of the #memo is probably not its contents but the fact that it was written and released at all. Its preparation and public dissemination represent a profound betrayal of the central premise of the intelligence oversight system.... They revealed highly sensitive secrets by way of scoring partisan political points and delegitimizing what appears to have been lawful and appropriate intelligence community activity." ...

... Paul Rosenzweig, in Politico Magazine, handily demonstrates how -- even if you pretend the Nunes memo is a serious document -- it utterly fails to meet its objectives. For instance, it's supposed to help Trump get rid of Rosenstein. But the initial FISA application on which the memo rests -- the one that supposedly relied entirely on the Steele dossier, was granted in October 2016 -- months before Trump appointed Rosenstein deputy AG. Rosenstein had nothing to do with it. Moreover, since FISA reauthorization apps must rely on new information obtained during surveillance ops, Rosenstein could not have relied on the Steele dossier at all; he & the FBI had to present to the FISA court new info learned in the course of surveilling Page. ...

     ... Mrs. McC: Even though this process is easy for you to understand, it is not something Trump would be able to comprehend. When Trump doesn't want to hear something, he doesn't. So the fact that Rosenstein is "innocent" of relying on the Steele dossier is immaterial. Over at Fox "News" they're still telling Trump that this is worse than a thousand Watergates. That's what he knows. ...

... Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "The [Nunes memo], while rehashing a lot of known facts about the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, is more notable for what it does not say. The memo does not say that counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign started with the Steele dossier[.] The memo does not discuss surveillance of a member of the Trump campaign[.]... The memo all relates to issues with the surveillance of Carter Page beginning in October 2016. Page stepped down from the Trump campaign in September because of controversy regarding his continuing contacts with Russians.... The memo does not present the Steele dossier as the exclusive basis for FISA warrant. The FBI, in an extraordinary statement, said the memo was incomplete and presented a false narrative. This suggests there is additional information about Page that is not disclosed in the memo.... The memo does not establish that the Steele dossier was unreliable[.]... The memo does not include anything that implicates Robert Mueller or his investigation[.]" ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Amid all the lies Donald Trump has told about the Russia scandal, there is one underlying truth: The intelligence community truly fears him and considers him unfit for the presidency. This is not because the intelligence community is traitorous, or left wing, or (as Donald Trump Jr. sneeringly put it) wine-spritzer-drinking elites. It is because the IC had early access to a wide array of terrifying intelligence linking Trump and his orbit to Russia. People who spend their lives protecting their country from foreign threats saw in Trump a candidate who had at some level been compromised by one of them. [Re: the Trump-Russia investigation, Trump] treats the effect as the cause. [FBI agent Peter] Strzok, as the context of his texts reveals, was a moderate Republican who voted for John Kasich in the GOP primary. [Christopher] Steele was a Brit who had not shown any strong passion for American politics. They developed intense preferences in the 2016 election outcome in large part because they had access to intelligence about Trump and Russia. They did not create this intelligence to support their political beliefs....

The stench of bad faith covers the entire effort. Trump has not even bothered to conceal his belief that the memo gives him an excuse to replace Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller's supervisor, with a more pliant figure. Trump believes to his core that he is entitled to federal law enforcement run by personal loyalists, and that any investigation of him is per se evidence of disqualifying bias. Nunes's memo places the House Republicans foursquare behind that grotesquely authoritarian belief. ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "The right-wing argument goes that Clinton operatives cooked up a scandalous piece of fiction, got [Christopher] Steele to pass it along to some Trump-haters in the F.B.I., who then persuaded their bosses at the Justice Department to open an investigation, and here we are, eighteen months later, with Robert Mueller and his investigators hounding an innocent President.... Yet, for the conspiracy theorists, the contents of the memo matter less than the support they've received recently from at least some elements of the Republican Party leadership, including Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, who earlier this week said the memo should be made public and talked about the need to 'cleanse' the F.B.I. Trump is capable of anything. If Trump uses the memo as a pretext to fire Rod Rosenstein..., Ryan and other senior Republicans will be wholly complicit in causing a constitutional crisis."

... See also some fine commentary in yesterday's Comments thread. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: According to the Nunes memo, Christopher "Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations -- an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn." But according to Glenn Simpson's testimony before Congress, it was Steele who terminated his relationship with the FBI after reading a New York Times report of October 31, 2016 which indicated the FBI had found no connection between the Trump campaign & Russian operatives despite Steele's knowledge that the FBI was aware of such connections. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: No one seems to notice that among the "disgraceful" people TrumpNunes & Co. are implicitly fingering are the judges on the FISA court. These judges are appointed (with no oversight) by Chief Justice John Roberts, who -- like Rosenstein, Comey, Wray, & Strzok -- is a Republican. The argument in the memo is that at least one of these judges (and possibly as many as four) is a potted rubberstamp plant who blithely issued & renewed surveillance warrants against upstanding American patriot Carter Page based on undocumented assertions in informal memos written by Christopher Steele, a former foreign agent with ulterior political motives (oh, and maybe on a Yahoo! report by Michael Isikoff based on Steele's findings). The treacherous plot against the Donald is remarkably widespread & embedded deep in the Republican party. ...

... Despite all this, Dahlia Lithwick thinks the memo will work as intended: "This memo has the twin benefits of being both incomprehensible and boring. It serves as a glittering distraction from a host of other insanities unspooling around the administration's consequential failures of governance and immolation of normalcy. But the other purpose of this memo, as has long been predicted, is that it serves as scaffolding for Donald Trump to fire deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein without having to use the pretext that his defining fault is that he is a 'Democrat from Baltimore.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the same argument I made before release of the memo. I'm a little less convinced of it now, because the memo itself is even dumber than I thought it would be. But it's still obvious that the only Americans who are going to find out there's no there there are those who don't get their "news" from Fox "News." Perhaps our only hope are late-nite comedians. We'll have to see what, if anything, they do with the memo Monday & Tuesday. Likely, they'll be talking about the Super Bowl instead. ...

AND Another Thing. Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "K.T. McFarland, President Trump's onetime deputy national security adviser, has withdrawn from consideration to be the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, the White House confirmed Friday. McFarland has been under scrutiny in the special-counsel probe into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Democratic lawmakers say she may have given inaccurate information about her knowledge of conversations that Michael Flynn, her former boss at the White House, had with Russia's ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition.... Last July, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked McFarland in writing whether she had spoken to Flynn about his contacts with the ambassador during the ... transition. 'I am not aware of any of the issues or events described above,' McFarland replied. But court documents filed in connection with Flynn's guilty plea contradict that statement."

AP: "The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will continue much of the Obama administration's nuclear weapons policy, but take a more aggressive stance toward Russia. It said Russia must be convinced it would face 'unacceptably dire costs' if it were to threaten even a limited nuclear attack in Europe. The sweeping review of US nuclear policy does not call for any net increase in strategic nuclear weapons -- a position that stands in contrast to ... Donald Trump's statement, in a tweet shortly before he took office, that the US 'must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes'.... The Trump nuclear doctrine breaks with Obama's in ending his push to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US defence policy."

Thomas Heath of the Washington Post: "The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 2.5 percent Friday -- closing down 666 points -- and suffered its worst week in two years as concerns over rising interest rates and inflation from an overheated economy triggered a long-feared sell-off. It was the worst day for stocks since President Trump took office -- and a stark reversal from the optimism that has propelled the markets higher for most of the past year. The market has been on a historic nine-year bull run. The U.S. and world economies are so strong that people think the situation cannot last. Concerns were fueled by a Labor Department report that wages in January were 2.9 percent higher than a year ago and unemployment held at 4.1 percent. A tightening labor market sparked fears that interest rates will rise." ...

... Matt Phillips of the New York Times: "Investors have spent much of the last year shrugging off geopolitical and economic risks.... Instead, they have focused on the strength of the United States economy, driven by banner corporate profits and President Trump's push to lower taxes and reduce regulation. The optimism helped lift stock markets ever higher, extending the boom into its ninth year. Now, investors are suddenly skittish. On Friday, stocks tumbled by more than 2 percent, propelling the market to its worst week in two years. The immediate catalyst was the jobs report, which showed the strong United States economy might finally be translating into rising wages for American workers -- a sign that higher inflation could be around the corner. But what is really worrying investors is that the fuel behind this stock market boom, namely cheap money from global central banks, may disappear sooner than they thought. In recent weeks, the shift in sentiment has played out across the world's largest financial markets. As stocks have sold off, Treasury yields have surged. The dollar has slumped.... In a strange way, investors are nervous that the global economy is doing too well."

Ian Kullgren of Politico: "Humane Society President and CEO Wayne Pacelle resigned Friday amid a spiraling crisis over sexual harassment allegations against him and a former top executive. Things had gotten progressively worse for Pacelle -- one of the most well-known animal rights advocates in the country -- since news broke last week of an internal investigation of allegations dating back to 2005. The board of directors cut the investigation short on Thursday and cleared Pacelle of wrongdoing, but Pacelle, facing a staff revolt and fleeing donors, stepped down less than 24 hours later."

Beyond the Beltway

Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post: "The ... state employee responsible for sending out the emergency ballistic-missile alert that panicked the state of Hawaii for 38 minutes last month was fired from his job at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency last week. The agency's top official, Vern T. Miyagi, resigned. [In a TV interview,] the man repeated claims that officials in Hawaii released: that the worker heard 'this is not a drill' at some point during a training exercise and assumed that the threat of an incoming missile was real.... An investigation released by the state described the employee as having a poor work history; other members of the emergency management agency's staff said that they did not feel comfortable with his work."

The Commentariat -- February 2, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: Trump's "early-morning Twitter post [reported below] reinforced reports that Mr. Trump, in allowing the Republican memo to be released, is seeking to clean house in the upper ranks of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, even at the risk of losing his own F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray.... Blaming senior government officials for favoring Democrats over Republicans is among the main themes in the memo, according to people who have seen it. The memo is said to accuse federal law enforcement officials of abusing their authorities when they sought permission to surveil former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page." ...

     ... NEW LEDE: "House Republicans released a previously secret memo on Friday in which they accuse senior officials at the F.B.I. and Justice Department of bias in the early stages of the Russia investigation." ...

... Vox has the full text here (the NYT linked currently (@12:30 pm ET) doesn't work), including an authorization letter from White House counsel Don McGahn.

*****

Helene Cooper & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The White House has grown frustrated in recent weeks by what it considers the Pentagon's reluctance to provide President Trump with options for a military strike against North Korea, according to officials, the latest sign of a deepening split in the administration over how to confront the nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-un. The national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, believes that for Mr. Trump's warnings to North Korea to be credible, the United States must have well-developed military plans, according to those officials. But the Pentagon, they say, is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically. Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act." Mrs. McC: No kidding.

Brooke Seipel of the Hill: "President Trump early Friday morning lashed out at Department of Justice (DOJ) leaders, as top officials continue to advise the president not to release a confidential memo accusing the DOJ and FBI of abusing their power. 'The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!' Trump tweeted early Friday.... The comment echoes Sean Hannity's own word choice late Thursday night. Hannity repeatedly criticized the FBI and DOJ, but added: 'not rank and file, we love you guys.'" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: "Sacred"? Really? God bless the "investigative process"? What Trump is trying to do here, among other things, is drive a wedge between DOJ & FBI leadership & the rank-and-file who report to them. Putin's plan is going very, very well. The only question is whether or not Trump is a witting or unwitting collaborator. ...

     ... The Show Must Go on. Lachlan Markay & Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: Trump gets advice from Sean Hannity, other on-air flamethrowers, ignores U.S. intelligence community. ...

... Surprise, Surprise. Irresponsible President* Makes Irresponsible Decision. Nicholas Fandos & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "President Trump cleared the way on Thursday for the release of a secret memo written by Republican congressional staffers and said to accuse federal law enforcement officials of abusing their surveillance authorities. Mr. Trump, who had a brief window to block the memo's disclosure on national security grounds, was expected to tell Congress on Friday that he had no objections and would likely not request any material be redacted, according to a senior administration official. It would then be up to the House Intelligence Committee, whose Republican leaders have pushed for its release, to make the document public. The president's decision came despite a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who say that releasing the document would jeopardize sensitive government information, including how intelligence is gathered, and from Democrats who say it is politically motivated and distorts the actions of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. by omitting crucial context." ...

... Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "... before he had even read it, Trump became absolutely convinced of one thing: The memo needed to come out.... 'There was never any hesitation,' said one presidential adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount private talks with Trump. 'The president was resolved on this. He was not going to be persuaded [otherwise]. He wanted it out.' The president did not actually see the memo ... until Wednesday afternoon.... The president said he thought the release of the memo would help build a public argument against [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein's handling of the case, according to people familiar with the discussions. Trump suggested to aides and confidants that the memo might give him the justification to fire Rosenstein -- something about which Trump has privately mused -- or make other changes at the Justice Department, which he had complained was not sufficiently loyal to him." Throughout most of the story, John Kelly is right in there, aiding & abetting, ignoring intelligence leaders' advice against the memo's release. ...

... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Inside the Trump administration, sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the 'slam dunk' document it's been hyped up to be." Mrs. McC: It will probably be too technical for Trumpbots to understand unless the fiction writers put in a lot of words like "shocking" & "unpresidented," the value of its content has been so degraded by the DOJ, the FBI & Democrats that it will be up to the media to make it shocking & unpresidented, & the whole hoohah is over a guy -- Carter Page -- from whom the Trump campaign & administration tried to distance itself, someone who, as Jonathan Chait points out, had a 4-year history of suspicious dealings with Russian agents that had garnered the attention of U.S. intelligence agencies. ...

... Kevin Liptak, et al., of CNN: "... Donald Trump continues to tell his associates he believes the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools could help discredit the Russia investigation, multiple sources familiar with White House discussions said.... Trump himself reviewed and read the memo on Wednesday, White House officials told CNN, and discussed it with chief of staff John Kelly and the White House counsel's office. Ahead of its expected release, the White House approved several redactions to the memo on national security grounds, according to a senior administration official. But the White House has so far rejected the FBI and Justice Department's requests for redactions that the White House believes are meant to conceal information that might be embarrassing to the agency, the official said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Poor Carter Page! Jonathan Chait: A few problems with the TrumpNunes theory of FBI treachery: "First, reports have indicated the FBI began investigating [Carter] Page well before [Christopher] Steele looked into him. Page met with Russian spies who were looking to recruit him in 2013, and passed documents to them. The Russian spies came away from the encounter confounded by his apparent stupidity ... but encouraged by his greed.... CNN reported last August that the FBI began surveilling Page in 2014, two years before the Steele dossier. In 2015 -- again, before Steele came along -- U.S. investigators overheard Russians discussing 'meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers,' The Wall Street Journal has reported. Second, even if it were true that the FBI based its entire case for surveilling Page on the Steele dossier, the dossier is not necessarily false.... The point of it was to identify suspicious grounds for investigation, which is what the FBI had already been doing anyway." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... "No FISA Warrant Relies on a Single Piece of Evidence." CBS News: "FBI director Christopher Wray is prepared to issue a rebuttal if the White House releases Rep. Devin Nunes's classified memo alleging inappropriate surveillance of the Trump campaign by the FBI and Justice Department, according to CBS News senior national security analyst Fran Townsend.... Townsend, who served as homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, told 'CBS This Morning' she believes the FBI is worried about both the accuracy of the memo's contents and what it may reveal about their sources and methods.... Townsend, who spent 13 years at the Justice Department, said it's simply 'not possible' for one partisan actor to push through a FISA warrant or to obtain one based on a single piece of evidence." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "Democrats are ratcheting up pressure on House Speaker Paul Ryan to intervene in the growing controversy involving House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who quietly changed his explosive memo alleging FBI abuse without informing many of his colleagues. The top Democrat in the Senate and the House say Republicans have 'decided to sow conspiracy theories' and 'attack the integrity and credibility of federal law enforcement as a means' to protect ... Donald Trump and undercut special counsel Robert Mueller. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter Thursday to Ryan, obtained by CNN, with a long list of questions ranging from the FBI and Justice Department objections to the letter to whether Ryan's staff was involved in drafting the memo and if the edits to the document were consistent with House rules.... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also sent a letter to Ryan calling Nunes' actions 'dangerous' and 'illegitimate,' and called on Ryan to remove Nunes as Intelligence Committee chairman." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... New York Times Editors: "So this is what a partisan witch hunt really looks like. In a demonstration of unbridled self-interest and bottomless bad faith, the Trump White House and its Republican minions in Congress are on the cusp of releasing a 'memo' that purports to document the biggest political scandal since Watergate.... [Devin] Nunes hasn't even seen the classified documents underlying his memo, and has refused to show his work even to Republican senators. Is this the behavior of someone concerned with honesty, transparency and good government?... The question is whether there are any adults left in the G.O.P. The evidence so far is not encouraging, notwithstanding a sporadic furrowed brow in the Senate." Mrs. McC: This editorial provides an overview of the fundamentals of this brouhaha. ...

... Washington Post Editors: House Speaker Paul "Ryan bears full responsibility for the deterioration of congressional oversight of intelligence operations. Once a bipartisan responsibility that lawmakers treated soberly -- as they still do in the Senate -- oversight under [Devin] Nunes has become another front in Mr. Trump's assault on the law enforcement institutions investigating the president and his associates. House Republicans are poisoning the committee's relationship with the intelligence community and distracting from real issues demanding attention. In all the noise around the memo, it is easy to lose sight of the scary truth that a hostile foreign government attempted to influence the 2016 election and shows every intention of trying again this year.... Mr. Nunes, with Mr. Ryan's aid and comfort, is helping Mr. Trump impede an investigation into these very issues." ...

... Ben Riley-Smith of the U.K. Telegraph: "Britain's spy agencies risk having their intelligence methods revealed if Donald Trump releases a controversial memo about the FBI, congressional figures have warned. The UK will be less likely to share confidential information if the secret memo about the Russian investigation is made public, according to those opposing its release." Mrs. McC: This matters. Trump is not only making us "less safe" in this particular, he's having a chilling effect on intelligence-sharing by all of our allies. ...

... Then again, as Gloria pointed out in yesterday's thread, we're making new friends in the international intelligence community:

... Jim Sciutto & Nicole Gaouette of CNN: "CIA Director Mike Pompeo did meet with the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, an official barred from entering the US under 2014 sanctions, as well as the head of Russia's internal security agency, according to a US official with direct knowledge of the meetings.... [Chuck] Schumer, whose staff was briefed on the meetings and the legal process involved before giving a Tuesday news conference, said the meeting represented 'a serious national security issue.' And he continued to blast Pompeo on Thursday. 'If this administration is ignoring sanctions, that's very serious,' the New York Democrat told CNN, noting that in the letter, Pompeo didn't directly acknowledge that he had met with his Russian counterparts. 'Director Pompeo's refusal to answer that question is deeply troubling.'... The Russian Embassy in Washington announced the Pompeo meeting in a Jan. 30 tweet."

Most Pathetic President* in American History. Grace Guarnieri of Newsweek: "During a Thursday press conference at the GOP retreat..., Donald Trump praised Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) for calling him the greatest president in American history. 'Orrin is -- I love listening to him speak ... he actually once said I'm the greatest president in the history of our country and I said, "Does that include Lincoln and Washington?" He said yes. I said, "I love this guy,'" Trump told a group of reporters in West Virginia.... A spokesperson for Hatch told Newsweek that the senator 'has said that he would like to work with the president to make this the greatest presidency in history for the American people.'"

Racist President* Continues to Otherize Dreamers. Cristiano Lima of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Thursday cautioned against labeling young undocumented immigrants protected under DACA as 'Dreamers,' warning people not to 'fall into that trap.' The president, addressing lawmakers at a Republican retreat in West Virginia, called for a resolution to the ongoing congressional impasse over immigration policy, which has stalled as Republican and Democratic officials have failed to reach a compromise over the Obama-era immigration initiative.... 'I said the other night, we have dreamers, too,' he said. 'We have dreamers in this country, too. We can't forget our dreamers. I have a lot of dreamers here.'" ...

... Trump Encourages Economic Racism. Renae Merle of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration has stripped enforcement powers from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau office that specializes in pursuing cases against financial firms accused of breaking discrimination laws, according to two people familiar with the matter and emails reviewed by The Washington Post. The move comes about two months after President Trump installed his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, at the head of an agency that has long been in the crosshairs of Republicans. The Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity had penalized lenders that it said had systematically imposed interest rates on minorities that were higher than those for whites." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... AND Why Should Poor People Have Competent Lawyers? Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Justice Department has effectively shuttered an Obama-era office dedicated to making legal aid accessible to all citizens, according to two people familiar with the situation. The division, the Office for Access to Justice, began as an initiative in 2010 under former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to increase and improve legal resources for indigent litigants in civil, criminal and tribal courts. Though the head of the office reports directly to the associate attorney general, it never gained much visibility within the Justice Department because it did not oversee a large staff of prosecutors. While Attorney General Jeff Sessions cannot close the office without notifying the Congress, he can sideline it by moving its resources elsewhere. Its offices now sit dark on the third floor of the Justice Department building. The staff of a dozen or so has dwindled and left the department over the past few months, the people said." Mrs. McC: Apparently JeffBo thinks the Sixth Amendment guaranteeing "Assistance of Counsel" applies mostly to wealthy people.

** Elizabeth Drew has a terrific essay in the New Republic about the impeachments of Nixon & Clinton, (Nixon resigned before the House voted on articles of impeachment) & why impeachment & conviction will not likely happen in the Age of Trump -- unless Trump does shoot somebody while strolling down Fifth Avenue. Hers is a cautionary tale, & demonstrates -- in the person of former Rep. Peter Rodino (D-N.J.) -- how the impeachment process should work. And, yes, Drew does suggest Trump is worse than Nixon. But then, so are his allies worse than Nixon's. Mrs. McC: Even though the Founders expected members of the House to be a rowdy bunch, apparently they did not foresee the likes of Devin Nunes. Thanks to PD Pepe for the link.

Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "Special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has gathered enough steam that some lawyers representing key Donald Trump associates are considering the possibility of a historic first: an indictment against a sitting president. While many legal experts contend that Mueller lacks the standing to bring criminal charges against Trump, at least two attorneys working with clients swept up in the Russia probe told Politico they consider it possible that Mueller could indict the president for obstruction of justice."

Huh. Darren Samuelsohn: "Three attorneys representing Rick Gates told a federal court Thursday they are immediately withdrawing as counsel for the former Donald Trump campaign aide, who is fighting special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of him on money laundering and other charges. Lawyers Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy said in a two-page motion that they would explain the reasons for their abrupt move in documents filed under seal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.... Speculation had been mounting that the longtime GOP operative might be seeking to cooperate with the Mueller investigation." ...

     ... Update. Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC: "... the most important development in the Russia probe is that fmr. Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates has new lawyers and why that could indicate he's cooperating with Mueller." (Video.)

Donald Trump goes to RNC dinner to rehash 2016 grievances (John Kasich is horrible; Massachusetts liberals flooded into New Hampshire & overturned my win) & boast most of the media couldn't pass that really hard mental acuity test he aced. Alex Isenstadt of Politico reports.

William Cohan of Vanity Fair: "The Mooch Recalls His Brief Shining Fortnight at the Center of American Politics." A colorful interview in which Anthony Scaramucci describes the White House staff in less-than-glowing terms: the fellow formerly known as Reince Preibus is now "Rancid Penis," for instance. Sadly, many of the people the Mooch so fondly remembers -- Priebus, Bannon, Spicer (and Lizza) -- also have moved on. You'd almost think a person could get burned dancing too close to the Orange Flame.

Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: "The Humane Society of the United States decided Thursday to keep chief executive Wayne Pacelle in his job in the wake of an internal investigation which identified three complaints of sexual harassment against him, a move that prompted seven board members to resign. The decision to keep Pacelle in his job and close the investigation against him defied demands by major donors for the Humane Society to cut its ties with the long-time chief executive -- or risk losing their support."

Beyond the Beltway

Another Blow to Voter Suppression. Steve Bousquet of the Tampa Bay Times: "The state of Florida routinely violates the constitutional rights of its own citizens by permanently revoking the right to vote for anyone convicted of a felony, a federal judge ruled Thursday. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said Florida's system unfairly relies on the personal support of the governor for citizens to regain 'this fundamental right.' In a strongly-worded ruling, he called the state's defense of voter disenfranchisement 'nonsensical' -- a withering criticism aimed at Gov. Rick Scott, the lead defendant in the case. 'Florida strips the right to vote from every man and woman who commits a felony,' Walker wrote. 'To vote again, disenfranchised citizens must kowtow before a panel of high-level government officials over which Florida's governor has absolute veto authority. No standards guide the panel. Its members alone must be satisfied that these citizens deserve restoration ... The question now is whether such a system passes constitutional muster. It does not.'... The judge gave both sides in the case until Feb. 12 to file briefings on how to permanently remedy the constitutional deficiencies in Florida's system.... Walker's decision came nine days after the state approved a ballot measure that, if passed in November, would automatically restore the voting rights of about 1.2 million felons, not including convicted murderers and sex offenders."

Way Beyond

Phil McCausland of NBC News: "The eldest son of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro took his own life Thursday.... Two Cuban government sources confirmed to NBC News that Fidel Angel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, died on Friday morning following months-long treatment 'for a deep state of depression by a group of doctors.'"

News Lede

New York Times: "The Labor Department released its official hiring and unemployment figures for January on Friday morning, providing the latest snapshot of the American economy. 200,000 jobs were added last month. Wall Street economists had expected an increase of about 180,000, according to Bloomberg. The unemployment rate was at 4.1 percent, the same as in December and the lowest since 2000. Average earnings rose by 9 cents an hour and are up 2.9 percent over the past year. Revisions in the November and December figures produced a net loss of 24,000."