Nunes memo adds new wrinkle to Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation

The Justice Department launched an internal investigation on Wednesday into how the FBI got permission to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Republicans have been pushing for some kind of investigation since February, after a GOP memo was released accusing the Justice Department and the FBI of tricking a federal judge so that they could surveil Carter Page.

Earlier this month, Republicans released the Nunes memo, which alleged improprieties in the Department of Justice and the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page. But Democrats on the committee led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said the memo was misleading, and put together their own memo in response.

Now, after a back-and-forth with the Trump administration, Democrats finally got permission to release their own memo in response, with some redactions. You can read the memo below, or at this link.

Late on Saturday afternoon, House Democrats surprised the country by releasing their rebuttal to the so-called Nunes memo — the document, prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), that has become a key part of the conservative argument that the FBI is biased against President Donald Trump. The Democrats’ rebuttal memo, written by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), argues that the Nunes memo is full of “distortions and misrepresentations” that don’t stand up to scrutiny based on the underlying classified evidence.

Having now read both memos, I can say with confidence: Schiff makes his case. He quotes key FBI documents that explicitly contradict the Nunes memo’s core arguments. Any fair-minded observer who reads these two documents side by side can only conclude one thing: Nunes is either deeply misinformed or straight-up lying.

In a tweet on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump defended his decision not to release a potentially politically damaging Democratic memo. The “very political and long” document had to be redone and sent back “in proper form,” the president said. His decision — and defense — comes just a week after he approved the release of a Republican memo on the same subject matter that the Democratic memo contradicts. Democrats have been calling on Trump to release their memo for days.

White House counsel Don McGahn on Friday wrote a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and author of the Republican memo, that Trump is “inclined to declassify” the Democratic memo — but, he said, because the document contains “numerous properly classified and especially sensitive pages,” the president isn’t able to do so. McGahn said Trump would reconsider the decision if certain changes were made to “mitigate the risks identified” by the Department of Justice.

The White House just further escalated its war with federal law enforcement, including the FBI. But it’s not because of something President Trump did. It’s because of something that President Trump refused to do.

Trump just decided not to release a potentially damaging memo — written by congressional Democrats — that rebuts a previous Republican-authored document alleging anti-Trump bias in the FBI. Trump made the GOP document public last week, but won’t do the same with the Democratic memo.

One of the most important questions in the Trump administration’s war on the FBI and the recent Nunes memo controversy is how Republican voters would respond to all of it. New data is shedding light on the answer to this question — and it’s not very promising.

According to a Reuters/IPSOS poll released on Monday evening, a huge majority of Republicans — 73 percent — believed that “members of the FBI and Department of Justice are working to delegitimize Trump through politically motivated investigations.”

#ReleaseTheMemo won.

Sean Hannity, king of conspiracy theories, won.

The Nunes memo has been released — and the conservative drumbeat demanding the firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is getting louder.

The Tea Party Patriots, a conservative activist group, put out an ad Friday that bluntly states: “It’s time for Rod Rosenstein to do his job or resign.”

The House Republicans released the highly controversial Nunes memo on Friday, after the White House gave the all-clear, over the objections of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Former FBI director James Comey — who’s been known to subtweet the Trump administration since he went public on Twitter — reacted with a scoff.

The biggest issue in American politics right now is something called “the Nunes memo.”

The four-page document, prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), alleges serious abuses of power by the FBI during its investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. House Republicans and conservative media have cast it as proof of President Donald Trump’s long-running allegations of FBI bias against him; Democrats say it’s deeply misleading, twisting and cherry-picking classified intelligence to make the president seem right.

House Republicans have claimed that the “Nunes memo” will reveal “jaw-dropping,” “shocking,” and “sickening” conduct from law enforcement officials in connection with their investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia — conduct that could even be “worse than Watergate.”

So you may be surprised to hear that the memo, which was just released, is entirely about ... surveillance of Carter Page.

The House Intelligence Committee just released the “Nunes memo” — and it contains some explosive allegations about the FBI.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted on Monday night to release the four-page memo, authored by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), which alleges that the FBI abused its power in surveilling Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. The vote gave the president five days to review the classified document and decide whether it should be released for the public.

The Nunes memo is out — and, after reading it closely, I’m struck by how sketchy it is.

Again and again, the memo makes allusions and suggestions that it does not manage to back up with facts.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee slammed Republicans after the House GOP released the Nunes memo on Friday.

“Chairman Nunes’ decision, supported by House Speaker Ryan and Republican Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to publicly release misleading allegations against the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation is a shameful effort to discredit these institutions, undermine the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation, and undercut congressional probes,” the committee’s Democrats said in a statement.

Rep. Devin Nunes’s infamous memo — the document numerous House Republicans claimed would demonstrate fundamental anti-Trump corruption at the FBI — was released early Friday afternoon. The entire thing is three and a half pages and only takes a few minutes to read closely and carefully.

After doing that, there is only one conclusion a fair reader could draw: There is absolutely nothing here.

As far as Republican operative Tim Miller, who was formerly on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign and advised the anti-Trump Super PAC Our Principles, is concerned, the highly anticipated Republican “memo” on the FBI’s Russia investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign was much ado about nothing.

The release of California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’s controversial memo, which conservatives spent weeks claiming would reveal earth-shattering evidence of partisan bias that would permanently damage the ongoing investigation, turned out to be somewhat underwhelming to many.

Over continued objections from the FBI, the White House declassified a version of Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’s four-page memo on Friday, which alleges serious abuses of power by the FBI during its investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee voted to declassify the memo on Monday, giving the White House five days to either release the memo or object, which would have sent the memo back to the House for a full vote on its release.

As America anxiously awaits the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” — a four-page document written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) alleging that the FBI fraudulently snooped on a Trump campaign adviser — it’s worth keeping in mind that there isn’t just one memo in play here.

There are actually three.

In the past 24 hours, there’s been a ton of news surrounding the Trump-Russia investigation.

On Wednesday, CNN reported that President Trump last month inappropriately asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein where the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s ties to Trump’s presidential campaign was heading. Trump also reportedly asked Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, if he was on the president’s “team,” even though the investigation is supposed to be independent of presidential interference.

On Monday night, House Republicans voted to release a memo alleging anti-Trump bias at the FBI. The classified memo reportedly details how the FBI used the Trump dossier produced by ex-British spy Christopher Steele to unlawfully surveil the president.

As my colleague Zack Beauchamp noted, there is no evidence so far that the FBI was plotting against Trump, and it’s unlikely that the memo will provide any. As it stands, the president has until Saturday to decide whether to release the memo. (The FBI has privately and publicly urged him not to do so.)

House Republicans have released a memo that paints the FBI and Justice Department as being biased against President Donald Trump — so much so that actors in both agencies have conjured up the investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia to take the president down.

The memo was written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), and it frames special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as an FBI effort to hurt Trump. To make this a truly comprehensive conspiracy theory, it uses both Hillary Clinton and the infamous Steele dossier in establishing the connections.

President Donald Trump is currently deciding whether or not to release a controversial secret memo, compiled by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), that alleges an anti-Trump conspiracy at the FBI.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted on Monday night to release it, though Democrats unanimously opposed it. The vote gave Trump five days to review the document and decide on its release. The president has previously indicated he wanted the memo made public, and it could be released as early as Thursday.

President Donald Trump just can’t seem to stop himself from making inappropriate comments to law enforcement officials involved with the Russia investigation — the latest being Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s overseeing Robert Mueller’s probe.

According to a new report from CNN’s Pamela Brown, Evan Perez and Laura Jarrett, when Rosenstein visited the White House in December, Trump asked Rosenstein where the Russia investigation was heading and whether the deputy attorney general was on his “team.” The CNN team cites “sources familiar with the meeting.”

After the State of the Union, C-SPAN caught this exchange between President Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC).

The memo Duncan is referring to is a four-page memo written by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), which allegedly details abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the FBI used to wiretap Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser for President Trump’s presidential campaign.

When House Republicans voted on Monday night to release a memo, compiled by Rep. Devin Nunes, alleging anti-Trump bias at the FBI, they raised a very serious question for American democracy.

The question is not whether there was a plot against Trump at the FBI, as the Nunes memo reportedly alleges. There is no evidence for such a claim, and it doesn’t pass the smell test. The real question is this: Will the FBI and Justice Department remain semi-independent agencies that check the president’s authority — or will they be brought under President Donald Trump’s direct control?