Of course Trump was going to release the memo. He ordered it, after all, like an overdone steak with a side of ketchup. Via The Post:
GOP memo criticizing FBI surveillance is released
A GOP memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI has been released, intensifying a fight between the White House and Republican lawmakers, on one side, and the nation’s top law enforcement agency over whether the origins of a probe into Russian interference in 2016 were tainted by political bias.
President Trump had approved release of the memo without redactions Friday morning.
The president told reporters in the Oval Office, “I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country. A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that.”
The FBI and the Justice Department had lobbied strenuously against the memo’s release. In a statement Wednesday, the FBI had said it was “gravely concerned” that key facts were missing from the memo, which, it said, left an inaccurate impression of how the agency conducted surveillance under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Yesterday, Paul Ryan said the memo isn’t “an indictment of the FBI, of the Department of Justice.” Trump yanked the rug out from under his widow-peaked lackey about 12 hours later with this tweet:
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018
So, now we get to find out if Trump and his stooges can convince folks that the all-Republican, Trump-appointed FBI and DOJ leadership team and overwhelmingly Republican investigator crew are biased against the president who hired them and in favor of the candidate the FBI sandbagged just days before the election.
This absurd theory is already an article of faith on Fox News, but will it resonate outside the 27%? US Senator from Florida Bill Nelson, not known to be a wild-eyed lefty, said this:
By releasing this memo, the President of the United States is undermining the credibility of our intelligence community and serving a huge victory to Vladimir Putin, the Russian government, and many other intelligence services.
— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) February 2, 2018
Those are fighting words, Bill. Good.
Courtesy of The Post, here’s a link to the memo.
ETA: Okay, I read it. Initial impression:
#MemoDay pic.twitter.com/AxR4YOcBOV
— Paul Dudack (@Paulied_D) February 2, 2018
This is going to blow up in their stupid fucking faces SO hard.