The fundamental question: If the report declares Trump innocent, what’s the need for the rebuttal?
Expect recycling of arguments going back to the Nunes Memo attempting to obstruct the Special Counsel investigation. Much has been debunked but the continued criticism of the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation begun in 2016 cannot exonerate Individual-1, as implied even in the Barr letter. The disinformation tactics remain the same as we get closer to the full Mueller report. The Giuliani diversions could also signal the most damaging elements of the Mueller report which remain redacted.
More attacks on the FBI and the Special Counsel may include idiocy like accusing James Comey of being a “spy”. An attempted meeting between Nunes and Barr signals some of the direction that a Giuliani “rebuttal” or “counter-report” may take.
Remember the numerous claims of the Nunes memo that were addressed by Adam Schiff and the then minority report.
“The Nunes memo was dishonest. And if it is allowed to stand, we risk significant collateral damage to essential elements of our democracy.”
1. The Nunes memo’s fundamental claim was that the FBI misled the court about Christopher Steele, the former British agent who was a source of information in the FISA applications on Carter Page. It accused the Bureau of failing to “disclose or reference the role of the [Democratic National Committee], Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding” Steele’s research. The government, it argued, portrayed Steele as unbiased, when in fact “the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.” This was strong stuff, certainly troubling if true.
Today we know that it was not true. Almost four weeks ago, based on my experience with the FISA program and those who administer it, I expressed confidence that the government “provided the court with enough information to meaningfully assess Steele’s credibility.” It took a while, but with the benefit of the minority memo—even in redacted form—this has now been confirmed. In other words, Nunes’s claim that the FBI misled the court was itself misleading. There are other ways in which the memo was misleading—discussed in the back and forth between Nunes and his critics on the House Intelligence Committee, and in Charlie Savage’s characteristically excellent summary in the New York Times—but the FBI’s alleged effort to deceive the court about Steele has always been the heart of the matter, and I am trying in this post to stick to the core.
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