Best summary of the memo so far. A little bit for everyone

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Ed Morrissey
?Verified account @EdMorrissey
12m12 minutes ago

(A) Most of what's in this memo has been either leaked prior to this or assumed, including the revelation that the FISA warrant relied in part on the Steele dossier. However, the memo makes clear that the Russia-collusion probe started well before that, with Papadopoulos.


(B) Despite all of the hysterics about the release of this memo, there seems to be little or no revelation about sources and methods in it. One has to wonder why these four pages were considered "Top Secret" in the first place. If it's Steele, that cat was out of the bag already.



(C) That being said, the FBI's withholding of their own relationship to Steele, and his relationship to the DNC and the Clinton campaign, looks like deliberate malfeasance, assuming that Nunes' conclusions are correct here.

(D) It raises one of the big concerns about FISA warrants, which is the lack of oversight and scrutiny they get. It seems the hysteria over this memo's classification was a good example of where that lack of scrutiny can take us.

(E) This also points out something that @AndrewCMcCarthy has stressed all along -- this was a counterintel operation, not a criminal probe. So far, we've not seen any evidence that it produced evidence of criminal activity.

(F) None of this really relates to the Mueller probe, which is springboarding off of that counterintel operation, except to the extent it relies on the Steele dossier ... which one assumes will not play much of a role, especially now.

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