But this is an interesting point in terms of why did the president decide to release this. why did he give republicans permission to release this? i ve read the memo about seven times and i just read it again about ten minutes ago. i don t understand how this exonerated the president. i don t get that. there is questions about the process, but if anything this strengthens the special prosecutor s hand, robert mueller s hand. so politically i think this will hurt the republican party in the long-term. where does this discussion of memos end. there is another fight now over memos. which is the democratic memo. the ten-page memo produced by democrats in the house intelligence committee but it is presenting a sort of factual rebuttal to the nunes memo. which nadler was not able to do because that information remains classified. filling in the omissions that are there and correct what they say are inaccurate assertions. question the the question is
Mischaracterization. and we have other members of the intelligence committee and staffers who said the judge was told that there was a political motivation behind the information. just without a name attached. if so, the nunes memo is indeed wildly misleading. that fact is still classified so people can t talk about it. i do want to push forward to february 8th because it s a handful of days away. this may not be resinate iing w the americans that care about the government being open. it s hard to know exactly what americans do care about because we re so split and so fractured. but i think it says a lot about what trump is thinking about. the president is thinking about. that he gives the state of the yawnon address on tuesday where the message is all about bipartisanship and cooperation. that s what e he wants you to tab away from it and three days later allows the release of the memo that he knows is going to inflame tensions and distract from those ongoing negotiations. i think
Request. . it shouldn t have been put forward and it represented a real abuse on the part of the justice department. what he s say in this memo takes that point head on. this memo is is being circulated just now to democrats in the house of representatives. and what he points out is that there s not enough evidence in the nunes memo to show that the fisa warrant would not have been approved and there s a case law that shows that it wouldn t have been improper for the fbi or the justice department not to include the fact that there were political sources behind it. the only real issues would have been if they intentionally either included improper information knowingly false information r or if theys ek colluded information that had had it been included would have reflected negatively on the chances of being approved. some of the other points in this memo involve that he had such expertise on the issues of russia and organized crime that his testimony that he found
His problem is that the facts that are necessary to show if the democrats are right that the nunes memo is wildly misleading and mischaracterizes things at its core findings, those are still classified. it will take president trump s decision and a vote by republican members of the house to let those contrary facts see the light of day. it will be interesting to see whether that happens. the key thing, the really core question is when the memo says the nunes memo, that is, that the intelligence court was never told that the democratic national committee or hillary clinton paid for the opposition research that was one component submitted to the judge this this wiretap application in october 2016, that creates the impression that the judge was not told that the information was coming from a source that might have a political bias. adam schiff, the chairman of the the house intelligence committee, said that s a serious
Robert, we ll start with you. and you heard from the ohio representative there, they did not let them know that this was politically funded but that is not true according to our sourcing as well as other representatives who are privy to the information that indeed they were made aware of the political contributions made to this very report in the beginning. but all said, robert, when we have the nadler response and now we re good to get the official democratic response from the house intel committee, this is the middle of a very busy week. one would think. one would think. this is post-state of the union. this is post record high on on the on wall street. one would think this is a good week for the republicans when the president tried to pivot to bipartisan issues, but the republican party, my party, put its foot in the mouth when it comes to sticking stepping on its own message in many ways.