Cough, cough, cough. The smoke around here is so thick I can hardly breathe.
The memo released Friday by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee purports to be an expression of shock, horror and dismay at alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process. But the document’s real purpose is to dishonestly suggest that the whole Robert Mueller investigation is politically motivated, cooked up by partisan Democrats in the FBI and the Justice Department.
Anyone who reads the thing can spot the holes where parts of the story have been left out — the details that would undercut the memo’s thesis. I recognize the technique. I have it on good authority that opinion columnists have been known to cherry-pick a fact or two, though of course I have no personal experience with that sort of thing.
But in this case, the whole world knows of four omitted facts that shred the memo’s tissue-thin conspiracy theory to ribbons: two guilty pleas and two indictments.
Trump campaign aides Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos — a big fish and a smaller one — have pleaded guilty to lying the FBI and are cooperating with the Mueller probe. Onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have been indicted on serious charges that could send them to federal prison.
I doubt they think this whole thing is make-believe.
A civil-liberties argument could be made against the FISA process in general — secret court hearings at which secret judges weigh secret evidence, with only the government allowed to present a case and nobody really arguing for the unfortunate subject whose private emails and texts are about to be surveilled. But few Republicans make that argument. They’re fine with FISA — as long as it’s not being used to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians.
No one outside of Mueller’s team knows whether more indictments or guilty pleas are on the way. But if they are, smoke won’t stop them.