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Greg Sargent: Trump and the great GOP abdication

Democrats have escalated their tactics in a kind of guerrilla operation designed to smuggle as much basic information about this great GOP abdication out to the public as possible.

FILE - In this Oct. 24, 2017, file photo, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Republicans who spent the early months of 2017 working with Democrats on investigations into Russian interference in U.S. elections have pivoted as the new year begins, leaving the conclusions of those congressional probes in doubt. As special counsel Robert Mueller has ramped up his own Russian investigation and brought charges against four of President Donald Trump's campaign advisers, and as midterm elections loom, Republicans have changed focus in their own Russia probes. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Something remarkable is happening in our politics right now. On multiple fronts, it has fallen to Democratic elected officials to step up and defend the integrity and basic functionings of our government — against Republican efforts to pervert and manipulate them in service of the goal of shielding President Donald Trump from accountability.

At the same time, in some cases Democrats have escalated their tactics in a kind of guerrilla operation designed to smuggle as much basic information about this great GOP abdication out to the public as possible.

This week, I’m told, Sen. Mark Warner, Va. — the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — will publicly say that classified information debunks the arguments reportedly made in the now-notorious secret memo by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., which bolsters the idea that the Russia investigation is a Deep-State Coup against Trump. Nunes has made this memo available to members of Congress, in what Democrats charge is a selective cherry-picking of intelligence designed to arm Republicans with talking points to discredit the Russia probe.

“Senator Warner will say publicly that unlike almost all of the 200 GOP congressmen who’ve seen the memo, he has actually read the underlying documents,” Rachel Cohen, a spokesman for Warner, emailed me Thursday morning. “He is confident that there was nothing improper like what this memo seems to allege.”

Nunes, at the urging of Trump’s allies, may soon release the memo, which purports to show that the FBI and Justice Department abused the surveillance process to target the Trump campaign, apparently to show that the Russia probe is an illegitimate abuse of power. The memo by Nunes reportedly says the application for a FISA surveillance warrant to target campaign adviser Carter Page was improperly based on information from former British spy Christopher Steele that was bankrolled by Democrats.

But it appears that the underlying application undermines this case. Warner is prepared to say this Thursday, and the New York Times also reports new information on this front:

“People familiar with the underlying application have portrayed the Republican memo as misleading in part because Mr. Steele’s information, which was also compiled into a notorious dossier, was insufficient to meet the standard for a FISA warrant. The application, they said, drew on other intelligence that the Republican memo misleadingly omits — but revealing that other information to rebut the memo would risk blowing other sources and methods of intelligence-gathering about Russia.”

If this is true, then the Nunes memo not only falsifies the role of the “Steele dossier” in securing the warrant; it self-secures its own cherry-picking against outside scrutiny. That’s because the underlying information that would reveal why the warrant was granted cannot be revealed for national security reasons.

In another effort to counter the apparent Nunes disinformation campaign, Rep. Adam Schiff — Nunes’s Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee — announced that he would produce his own report purportedly debunking the Nunes memo and will ask the committee to allow members of Congress to view it, too, in effect (again) smuggling bits of counter-information out to the public.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department released a letter to Nunes arguing that the memo’s release would compromise intelligence operations and would deviate from a “good faith” arrangement on the terms of access to classified info negotiated between the Justice Department, the House Intelligence Committee and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office. It is unclear whether Ryan has blessed the “release the memo” strategy, but it probably wouldn’t go forward without his tacit approval. Given that the Justice Department says its release would be dangerous and would violate a deal Ryan himself entered into, I asked Ryan’s office Thursday whether he disputes that claim and whether he supports the memo’s release, but I got no response.

All this is happening on multiple other fronts. Trump officials have conceded that he’s failing to protect our elections against future Russia sabotage, because he won’t diminish his great victory by admitting it happened last time at all. So Foreign Relations Committee Dems released a report detailing this abdication for the public. Republicans keep pushing the idea that the Steele Dossier sparked the FBI probe. So Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Calif., released the testimony by the founder of Fusion GPS, the firm that bankrolled Steele, in which he challenged that account. In these cases, independent reporting has confirmed Trump’s failure to secure our elections and that the GOP’s account of the FBI probe’s genesis is bogus.

Still more: House Intelligence Committee Dems are mulling a minority report that would detail the ways Nunes frustrated a full accounting into the conduct of Trump and his top officials, once again detailing this great abdication for the public. And so on.

The Russia probe, of course, may clear Trump and/or his associates of wrongdoing. But what’s at issue here is whether there will also be a full accounting into what Russia did to undermine our elections and democracy. One party is trying to frustrate and discredit this accounting, and is perverting the basic workings of government to do so. The other party is trying to defend those workings and to facilitate that accounting — and to get word out to the public about what’s really happening here.

TRUMP THINKS HE CAN SALES-PITCH MUELLER: Trump has now said he is “looking forward” to speaking under oath with Robert Mueller to clear his name. The New York Times reports this:

“People familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking have long described private conversations with the president in which he has said he is eager to meet with Mr. Mueller, a product of his belief that he can sell or coax almost anyone into seeing things his way.”

Of course, after his wrongdoing in the private sector he could just throw his team of lawyers at the problem. Here, maybe not so much.

TRUMP’S LAWYER BACKTRACKS: Of course, Trump’s lawyer is already saying Trump didn’t really mean it:

“Ty Cobb ... said Mr. Trump was speaking hurriedly and intended only to say that he was willing to meet. ‘He’s ready to meet with them, but he’ll be guided by the advice of his personal counsel,’ Mr. Cobb said. He said the arrangements were being worked out between Mr. Mueller’s team and the president’s personal lawyers.”

Trump’s lawyers will be pushing for as many limits on open-ended questioning as possible (despite Trump’s claim he’s looking forward to it).

Greg Sargent | The Washington Post

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant — what you might call “opinionated reporting” from the left.