The Nunes memo is likely to be released into the wild on Friday.
We’re likely to see the Memo—that’s the House Intelligence committee’s memo, written by GOP chairman Devin Nunes, alleging wrongdoing on the part of the FBI’s initial investigation into Russian meddling by Trump campaign associates—sometime on Friday. Whatever Nunes’s summary of the FBI’s FISA warrant application reveals, there’s a high likelihood it won’t be the full story of how federal investigators justified a wiretap on Carter Page, the loosely-affiliated Trump campaign adviser.
That wiretap is what kicked off the probe into Trump that became the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller. Two sources told CNN Thursday that the president has been calling friends to say that the release of the Nunes memo will “make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him.” But that’s not what House speaker Paul Ryan, who supports the release of the memo, says.
“What this is not is an indictment on our institutions, of our justice system. This memo is not an indictment of the FBI, of the Department of Justice. It does not impugn the investigation or the deputy attorney general,” Ryan said Thursday. Both Trump and Ryan have seen the memo—is it possible the two leaders have such starkly different interpretations of the same information? |
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2018 Watch—Is Mitt Romney going to make an announcement next week that he’s running for the U.S. Senate in Utah? The 2012 Republican presidential nominee tweeted a hint Thursday:
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President Trump brought a simple message to congressional Republicans when he visited their annual retreat Thursday: the intraparty quibbles of 2017 should stay in the past.
“Working together, we’ve accomplished extraordinary things for the American people over the last year, and I really believe this is just the beginning,” Trump told the assembled lawmakers at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. “You know, Paul Ryan called me the other day . . . It’s the most united he’s ever seen the party, and I see it too.”
Trump urged the caucus to be flexible and willing to look for compromises with Democrats—“unless we elect more Republicans, in which case we can have it just the way everybody in this room wants it.”
“We have to be willing to give a little in order for our country to gain a whole lot,” he said. “If we’re united, if we work together for the good of the nation, and we can fulfill our sacred duty to the country and to our incredible voters, we have really fulfilled a solemn promise.” Read more... |
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2020 Watch—Over at BuzzFeed, Henry Gomez reports that there’s little to no enthusiasm in early primary states for a Republican challenger to President Trump. Here’s the money quote, from the South Carolina GOP chairman: “I ain’t running into any South Carolina Republicans who are looking to buy anything right now that ain’t Donald Trump.”
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Trump was more combative after his return from West Virginia to Washington Thursday night, using an appearance at a Republican National Committee meeting at the Trump International Hotel to take jabs at Democratic obstruction and his State of the Union’s “haters.”
“The Democrats are AWOL,” he said, referring to Senate Democrats’ distaste for the White House’s immigration deal. “They’re missing in action.”
Only the first few minutes of Trump’s speech were available to media. |
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We’ve just added a new special guest speaker at this year’s Weekly Standard Summit at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs: Special Report host Bret Baier of Fox News. Get a chance to hear from Baier and others in our lineup of speakers (including your humble White House Watch author) from May 17-20.
Learn more and sign up for the Summit here. |
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