Opinion: Motives behind GOP-Nunes memo release deeply troubling | Americas| North and South American news impacting on Europe | DW | 02.02.2018
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Opinion: Motives behind GOP-Nunes memo release deeply troubling

The Republican memo purporting to show how the Justice Department and the FBI abused its power to probe the Trump campaign is underwhelming. But the reasons for its release are of great significance, says Michael Knigge.

After weeks of hype and against the ardent opposition of Democrats, the Republican-led House of Representatives on Friday finally released the memo that President Donald Trump said shows how leaders of the FBI and the Justice Department were biased against him and "have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats."

The gist of the memo's claim is that the FBI and the Justice Department, in its application to get a warrant to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, did not disclose that part of the application information stemmed from a dossier financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that the dossier's author Christopher Steele was anti-Trump.

Caveats about the claim

While it seems indeed problematic if this information about the source was not disclosed in the surveillance application, there are few key caveats about that claim.

Michael Knigge App

Michael Knigge is DW's correspondent in Washington

First, we don't know if this was in fact really the case since this is the selective Republican interpretation of documents reviewed by the House Intelligence Committee, headed by GOP Congressman and Trump acolyte Devin Nunes. Second, Carter Page, due to his extensive Russia ties, according to court documents and testimony reported by the Wall Street Journal, was already on the radar of US counterintelligence authorities long before his role in the Trump campaign. Third, the source background was likely not a legal requirement to get a warrant. Fourth, even if, as Republicans claim, the source background was lacking in the application that does not automatically render his information false. And fifth, the last page of the memo, perhaps inadvertently, refutes the claim often made by Republicans that the Steele dossier triggered the probe since it explicitly states that information by former Trump advisor George Papadopoulos triggered it.                                             

To be clear — assuming that the GOP's claim is true — it would of course have been desirable that the background about the Steele dossier would have been included in the surveillance application simply to avoid the accusation of bias we are dealing with now.

Pretext to undermine Mueller probe

But having said all that about the claims of the memo — the key question to ask is this: Is this memo the smoking gun showing that the FBI and the Justice Department flagrantly conspired to gin up an investigation of the Trump campaign? No, it isn't, not by a long shot.       

Instead the memo seems more like a desperate attempt by Nunes, who served on Trump's transition team, to provide a pretext for the president to go after all those in the Justice Department and the FBI who he views of not being adequately loyal to him. And for Trump this means not doing enough to hamper or shut down the dreaded probe by special counsel Robert Mueller which is getting closer and closer to the president himself. Because this, make no mistake, is Trump's ultimate goal — to finally rid himself of the Mueller investigation that could threaten his presidency. 

And this is why the memo, despite being more like a dud than the promised bombshell, is deeply troubling. It could pave the way for Trump to fire or force out those who stand in the way of getting rid of Mueller. And at least as worrying is the thought that many, if not most, Republicans would go along with it.

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