‘Delegitimizing’ Mueller? Don’t Blame the Nunes Memo
by Andrew C. McCarthy @AndrewCMcCarthy
The FBI and Justice Department hyped Trump–Russia collusion. Rod Rosenstein can right that wrong.
The most bitter dispute over the Nunes memo involves Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. This might seem odd since the memo, published last week by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Devin Nunes (R. Calif.), does not address the Mueller investigation. Rather, it homes in on potential abuses of foreign-intelligence-collection authorities by Obama-era Justice Department and FBI officials, said to have occurred many months before Mueller was appointe
Nevertheless, it is simply a fact that many ardent supporters of President Trump claim the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation is destroyed by revelations in the Nunes memo — particularly, the improper use of the unverified Steele dossier to obtain a FISA-court warrant to spy on Carter Page, who had been a Trump campaign adviser. The idea is that without the Steele dossier, there would be no Trump-Russia narrative, and thus no collusion investigation — which is how Trump supporters perceive the Mueller probe.
Naturally, this has prompted a vitriolic response. Trump critics see the Mueller investigation as the path to impeachment, and thus anathematize Chairman Nunes as a Trumpist hack bent on razing the FBI — longtime bête noire of the Left, which, through the alchemy of Trump derangement, has suddenly become great a pillar of Our Values.
But the Trump-deranged have only themselves to blame.
We can certainly lament the effort by Trump defenders to use the Nunes memo as an attack on Mueller’s investigation — I did as much in this column on Sunday. Even as we do, though, we must remember that it was not they who brought us to this pass. It was the FBI and the Justice Department.
The Mueller investigation is supposed to be a counterintelligence probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Getting to the bottom of Russia’s perfidy is a goal every American should support, just as possible abuse of the government’s surveillance powers ought to concern everyone, regardless of party or ideology.
Yet the FBI and the Justice Department went out of their way, and outside their own policy, to frame the Russia investigation within an innuendo-laden narrative of Trump collusion. They did so by selectively broadcasting investigative information that is supposed to be confidential and non-public. Anti-Trump factions of all political stripes were delighted with this branding of the probe, which Mueller took over last May. That was foolish. Their strategy made it inevitable that, unless solid evidence of a traitorous Trump pact with the Kremlin materialized, Mueller’s investigation would face blistering attack.
Now that strategy is blowing up on them.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456185/nunes-memo-rod-rosenstein-can-clean-mess