Believe it or not it may be retiring Congressman Trey Gowdy who put the final nail in the "secret memo" coffin.

When Trey Gowdy says Trump's vindication claim is garbage, Republicans are cooked. pic.twitter.com/zesgMvMKNN

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 4, 2018

Courtesy of The Hill: 

CBS's Margaret Brennan pressed Gowdy on whether he believes the memo has "no impact on the Russia probe." 

"Not to me, it doesn't — and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it," Gowdy, who recently announced he will not seek reelection, said. 

"There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica." 

He added that the dossier has "nothing to do with George Papadopoulos's meeting in Great Britain." 

"It also doesn't have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier," he said.

And that my friends, is that. 

Also keep in mind that Gowdy was the one that Nunes sent to read the actual documentation behind those FISA applications.

He then brought his notes to Nunes and his staff, and that is where this memo originated.

So if Gowdy is stating emphatically that the memo has "no impact on the Russia probe" THAT is game over.

Back in 2013 Carter Page was bragging that he was an adviser to the Kremlin.

Oh you found that letter did you? Damn!

Courtesy of Time: 

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years. 

The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page. 

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

But wait, I thought the whole point of the Devin Nunes "secret memo" was that there was no legitimate reason to issue a FISA warrant against Page, and that the ONLY reason the FBI obtained one was due to that Christopher Steele dossier?

Do you hear that sound?

That is the sound of little right wing heads exploding in frustration.

Bill Maher mocks Trumpsters over the border wall.

My favorite part of this was that Maher delivered it while sitting right next to Anthony Scaramucci, who holds the record for the shortest stint in any administration ever.

Maher also made fun of the Nunes memo, suggesting that it read like a glorified "Facebook post that you scan before you click unfriend."

Donald Trump tweets that the Nunes' memo "totally vindicates Trump."

This memo totally vindicates “Trump” in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2018

Courtesy of Politico:  

President Donald Trump said Saturday that the controversial memo written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and other GOP lawmakers "totally vindicates" him — a judgment shared by few but his staunchest defenders. 

"This memo totally vindicates “Trump” in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on," the president wrote on Twitter. "Their [sic] was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead)." 

Democrats and some conservatives said the memo did nothing to delegitimize Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation; if anything, some of them said it confirmed that the probe was not predicated on the anti-Trump dossier that the president and his allies have attacked.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump does not simply enjoy hearing misinformation that comforts him into believing that his presidency is going better than it is, but that he absolutely believes it to be true.

I read the memo yesterday, and if you read the memo yesterday, you know as well as I do that it did nothing to "vindicate" Donald Trump.

In fact it proved that the allegation the investigation was based on false evidence, completely false.

The initial investigation was the result of good intelligence, and the continued reevaluation of the FISA case against Carter Page demonstrated that there was increasing information that he was still clearly working with the Russians.

Oh, and just in case somebody fixes that tweet before this is published, yes Trump used the wrong "their" on his official Twitter page.

Release the Memo! Oh, is that it?

Upon memo’s release, Nunes claims GOPers "discovered serious violations" https://t.co/rS9sZAH0jr pic.twitter.com/lSRZmu7r8h

— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) February 2, 2018

Okay so the memo got released today.

I read it. (You can also read it here.)

My very well thought out and cleverly worded response is, um....seriously?

Here is what the Washington Post had to say about it: 

The four-page, newly declassified memo written by the Republican staffers for the House Intelligence Committee said the findings “raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain (Justice Department) and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),’’ calling it “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.’’ 

The memo accuses former officials who approved the surveillance applications – a group that includes former FBI Director James B. Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former deputy attorney general Sally Yates and current Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein — of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain. 

The memo says Steele “was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.’’ 

The memo is not an intelligence document and reflects information the committee has gathered, which Democrats, the FBI and Justice Department have criticized as incomplete and misleading.

Much of the focus of the memo, is that the surveillance of Carter Page...

Yeah, this dude.

...was almost wholly approved due to information provided in the Steele dossier, which the Republicans suggest is tainted by the fact that Democrats funded a portion of the investigation. (Remember originally it was the conservatives footing the bill.)

They also suggest that the information was tainted by the fact that Steele also discussed the dossier with various news outlets. (I am not really sure how that is a thing.)

However as Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson testified "sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump (campaign)."

That suggests that the FISA court likely had other information available to help decide whether surveillance was necessary, that the memo has conveniently left out.

Besides as the Wall Street Journal points out Carter Page was on the counterintelligence radar from as far back as 2013.

This is from a release by the House minority in response to this misleading memo:

“The Republican document mischaracterizes highly sensitive classified information that few Members of Congress have seen, and which Chairman Nunes himself chose not to review. It fails to provide vital context and information contained in DOJ’s FISA application and renewals, and ignores why and how the FBI initiated, and the Special Counsel has continued, its counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s election interference and links to the Trump campaign. The sole purpose of the Republican document is to circle the wagons around the White House and insulate the President. Tellingly, when asked whether the Republican staff who wrote the memo had coordinated its drafting with the White House, the Chairman refused to answer. 

“The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process. As the Minority memo makes clear, none of this is true. The FBI had good reason to be concerned about Carter Page and would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA warrant. 

“In order to understand the context in which the FBI sought a FISA warrant for Carter Page, it is necessary to understand how the investigation began, what other information the FBI had about Russia’s efforts to interfere with our election, and what the FBI knew about Carter Page prior to making application to the court – including Carter Page’s previous interactions with Russian intelligence operatives. This is set out in the Democratic response which the GOP so far refuses to make public. 

“The authors of the GOP memo would like the country to believe that the investigation began with Christopher Steele and the dossier, and if they can just discredit Mr. Steele, they can make the whole investigation go away regardless of the Russians’ interference in our election or the role of the Trump campaign in that interference. This ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture. 

I mean at this point it is almost giving it too much credit to call this memo a "nothing burger."

Here is what Twitter is saying about the release of the memo:

Senate Intel Vice Chair Warner on memo release:

"Unlike almost every House member who voted in favor of this memo's release, I have actually read the underlying documents on which the memo was based. They simply do not support its conclusions.”

Latest: https://t.co/X0E7hXhGni

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 2, 2018

This, all the way at the bottom of the Nunes memo, literally proves that the FBI didn't use the Steele dossier as its sole source for a FISA warrant. Papadopoulos was not mentioned in the dossier and he came on the FBI's radar before Steele even handed them his first report. pic.twitter.com/XOcMt6WjM8

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) February 2, 2018

#NunesMemo concedes that #Steele had provided reliable intel in the past. Pretty much undercuts the whole argument about the #FISA warrants being corrupt. #Nothingburger.

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) February 2, 2018

LOL

A year attacking the Steele dossier.

A month hyping that the dossier started the whole FBI investigation.

Weeks hyping that they have a memo (a memo!) that will finally prove it!

So... is there some other memo?

Because this one says it was Papadopoulos, not the dossier.

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 2, 2018

There is literally so much fail here that I am not even sure that Fox News can make a mountain out of this pathetic little molehill.

But we know they're gonna try. 

You KNOW this is true.

When the memo comes out ...

one cable news network will treat it like the Bible

one will have memo supporters yelling at memo critics

one will have Rachel @maddow telling you the truth

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) February 2, 2018

Devin Nunes will not say if he worked with the White House on his "secret memo." I think we know what that means.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee refused to answer when a colleague asked him if he had coordinated his incendiary surveillance memo with the White House, The Daily Beast has learned. 

During Monday’s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump’s allies in the Russia probe. 

According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn’t answer the question before finally responding, “I’m not answering.”

Well actually that sort of IS an answer, isn't it?

In the meantime even Trump's own FBI Director has come out against releasing this memo.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the White House he opposes the release of a controversial, classified GOP memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Wray was actually one of the few people  allowed to read the memo, so he knows what he is talking about. 

However that is not going to stop Trump:  

President Donald Trump was overheard Tuesday night telling a Republican lawmaker that he was “100 percent” planning to release the memo, which was written by staffers on the House Intelligence Committee and is aimed at raising questions about the validity of the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

It should also be noted that reports are that Nunes himself has actually not read the classified documents that were used to write the memo, so he really does not know what the negative effect might be.

Of course he might not even really care.

Which leads us to this exchange: 

On Tuesday’s edition of Morning Joe, political analyst John Heilemann asked a question of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) that he readily admitted “under almost any other circumstances would be ridiculous and absurd, but under these circumstances I think is actually warranted.” 

“Is it possible that the Republican chairman of the House Intel Committee has been compromised by the Russians?” Heilemann inquired. “Is it possible that we actually have a Russian agent running the House Intel Committee on the Republican side?”

Murphy replied by saying: “I hope that’s not the case and I certainly have no information to suggest that it is.” 

Notably, he did not call the notion “ridiculous” or “absurd.” Instead, Murphy suggested that Nunes was “instinctually” acting to protect President Trump. 

“Doesn’t his behavior speak of that though?” Heilemann pressed on. “I’m not the first person who’s raised this. He’s behaving like someone who’s compromised and there are people in the intelligence community and others with great expertise in this area who look at him and say, ‘That guy’s been compromised.’”

I am trying not to go all "Alex Jones" here but I am beginning to wonder if there are not a number of Republicans who have been compromised by the Russians.

 I'm just saying.