Oxymorons

The House Intelligence Committee is led by Devin Nunes, no one's idea of a real smart guy, not even his own idea of a real smart guy. When he made his dash to the White House last March and was then shown to be a craven bootlicker, he said he really would rather be home making goat cheese. But he is a loyal soldier so he remains in Congress and remains as head of the House Intelligence Committee although he doesn't fit that profile.

This showed once again today when he forced the release of a four page memo that his staff wrote (also not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier) that supposedly shows extreme bias at the DoJ and specifically at the FBI. Never mind that the head of the FBI was hand picked by Trump and is a registered Republican, never mind that the assistant AG is also a registered Republican and was also picked by Trump, never mind that the process for working with the DoJ to obtain FISA warrants is cumbersome and involves numerous redundancies to prevent targeting innocent people. Anyway, the memo was released and there was virtually nothing there, sort of like between Rep. Nunes' ears, but what was there seems to do the exact opposite of what Nunes wants.

Pretty much the only thing the memo claims is that the FISA warrant granted to investigate Carter Page relied on the Christopher Steele memo. Now that is unlikely to be accurate because FISA requests normally run to dozens of pages and affidavits and evidence that a judge examines before granting the FISA warrant. But if that were the only evidence used to seek more answers through more insidious means, that would mean that the judge who looked at the evidence in the Steele memo found the information to be credible and worthy of further investigation. And Carter Page was not even the target or subject of the Steele memo.

I am reasonably sure that Devin Nunes doesn't want anyone, not even me, to think that the Steele memo has even a semblance of credibility. I am reasonably sure that Devin Nunes wants everyone to think that the Steele memo is a farrago of innuendo and gossip rather than anything that any judge anywhere would rely on for a FISA warrant which some judge (they are anonymous) did.