The president has proven relentless in his attacks on the nation’s justice system to the point of attracting credible allegations of obstruction of justice.
Unsurprisingly, the president has now ended up siding with Congressional Republicans in the controversy over the so-called Nunes memo, allowing for it to be released on Friday, after the House Intel Committee voted for it to be released earlier in the week.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, the president said that the memo reveals supposed abuses of power in the Justice Department that are a “disgrace” and that certain people “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Just this week, the president’s longtime enemy, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, announced his resignation in a move that was widely seen coming considering his upcoming eligibility for retirement benefits.
The Trump camp seized on this resignation as supposed evidence of McCabe being complicit in wrongdoing at the FBI, which the GOP alleges constituted surveillance overreach, with the FBI allegedly using partisan means to secure a warrant to monitor Carter Page’s communications.
Now, with the memo out, the rest of us can judge these claims from the president’s team for ourselves, although the FBI itself has been among the interests to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the document ahead of its release.
The document alleges that the FBI used politically biased information in pursuing its investigation of the Trump team, a claim that — if true — leads, of course to the entire Russia investigation being called into question.
That’s what the Republicans want to happen, but interests ranging from the FBI to Congressional Democrats have credibly alleged that the memo is just a partisan hit job that leaves out key info.
