The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That’s why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen.
Has this series exposed you to new ideas? Tell us how. Email us at ourpicks@nytimes.com.
For an archive of all the Partisan Writing Roundups, check out Our Picks.
From the Right
Mary Katharine Ham in The Federalist:
“We’ve been trying for a year to separate correct from wrong and responsible from irresponsible, and there has been plenty of wrong and irresponsible reporting. This memo offers additional context, even if it’s as selective, incomplete, and politically motivated as its harshest critics suggest.”
Ms. Ham draws parallels between the Nunes memo and much of the reporting around potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign team. Both, she writes, rely on selectively released information with partisan or biased sources at their origin. She advises readers of both the memo and news media accounts to take these caveats into consideration before drawing conclusions from either. Read more »
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Jim Geraghty in National Review:
“Whatever you think of President Trump, Carter Page, or any of these other figures, it’s bad when the F.B.I. withholds information while applying for FISA warrants.”
For Mr. Geraghty, the key piece of wrongdoing revealed by the Nunes memo is how the F.B.I. handled its application to monitor Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. He asks his readers to imagine that the roles were reversed and that “Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials because of research by… oh, America Rising, or Jerome Corsi, and then withheld the source of that information from the FISA judge when they sought permission.” Democrats, he writes, would justifiably be enraged by a law enforcement agency using its power to accomplish “partisan objectives.” Read more »
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From the Left
Eric Levitz in New York Magazine:
“Even if we stipulate that all of the memo’s factual assertions are true, the document does nothing to discredit the validity of the Mueller investigation — but does quite a bit to discredit the GOP’s own attacks on that probe.”
It’s possible, Mr. Levitz concedes, that Mr. Page was improperly surveilled by the government. However, in his estimation, the memo doesn’t do many of the things Trump allies may have been hoping for and speculating about. Notably, it does not prove the Steele dossier was the basis for the investigation into collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Moreover the memo does little to impugn the behavior of current F.B.I. and Justice Department leadership, like Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who some believe is in the president’s cross hairs. Read more »
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Matthew Miller in The Washington Post:
“What makes the president’s involvement so fundamentally inappropriate is the fact that the Nunes memo cannot be disentwined from the active, ongoing investigation into the president and his 2016 campaign.”
Mr. Miller worked in the Justice Department under Eric Holder, the former attorney general, from 2009 to 2011. He suggests that, in addition to firing James Comey, President Trump’s decision to release the Nunes memo may play a big part in the obstruction of justice investigation against him. Read more »
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Finally, From the Center
Jonathan Swan in Axios:
“What I want to know most is whether the information used to get the FISA warrant was verified before the U.S. government began surveillance of Carter Page.”
Mr. Swan still has some outstanding questions, including whether any of the information in the FISA application to surveil Mr. Page was actually incorrect — and, if so, what that means for the broader investigation. Read more »
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“After days of fevered speculation about the memo, the document that emerges is interesting but vague. It is not the game-changer that some Republicans in the House promised.”
Mr. Graham’s analysis of the memo boils down to this: “If the legal ramifications of the memo seem minimal, the political repercussions are less clear.” As he points out, legal scholars have explained why relying on partisan documents are not legally prohibited from being used in FISA applications. The big misstep by the F.B.I., he suggests, is in their vocal opposition to releasing the memo in the first place: “The memo will focus attention on whether it is too easy for the F.B.I. to obtain FISA warrants.” Read more »
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