We don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here but this is a really important development in the “memo” story that’s being reported by the New York Times, The Washington Post, even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The central contention of the Nunes memo was that the Justice Department didn’t tell the FISA court the whole story, that the Steele dossier (dirt on Trump) was paid for by the Clinton campaign and therefore politically motivated. It was, for all intents, The Department of Justice out to get Donald Trump. Or, maybe not.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee allege the court was never told of this political bias when DOJ asked for warrants to wiretap a Trump campaign aide. But in fact, according to sources for three major newspapers, the court WAS told a political campaign paid for the information that led to the surveillance.
NYT, WaPo and WSJ all have sources tonight saying the FBI did tell the FISA court in its warrant application that Steele was being backed by a political entity. https://t.co/NHLDu5lrJE, https://t.co/bQnsuEIwGT, https://t.co/MQxF7tv17y pic.twitter.com/lRcO5fBcYW
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 3, 2018
That’s huge because if true, the central allegation of this long exercise would be completely baseless. So, maybe not bigger than Watergate. The clever hashtag on Twitter is #mehmo.
And, finally, there’s this. CNN is reporting that Devin Nunes didn’t bother read the FISA warrant applications before writing the memo. What a transparent mess.