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White House Watch: Trump’s ‘Sweet Revenge’

By Michael Warren

Donald Trump says the House Intelligence committee memo on the FBI’s application to surveil an associate of his campaign “totally vindicates” him in the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The memo, authored by Republican Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes, does no such thing. It does reveal a serious problem of shoddiness and political bias at the FBI surrounding the procurement of at least one wiretap warrant that built the case that eventually became part of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump campaign aides and White House figures. But as the final item of Nunes’s memo notes, the surveillance of Carter Page enabled by this warrant was not what triggered the FBI’s initial investigation—information about another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, did.

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But Trump and his allies spent the weekend insisting the document showed these investigations were entirely baseless. “[T]he Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on,” Trump tweeted on Saturday, calling the situation “an American disgrace.” The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said on Fox News that the memo release was “a little bit of sweet revenge” for his family.

Trump’s media allies followed suit throughout the weekend. On Friday night, Fox News’s Sean Hannity called the scandal revealed by the memo “Watergate times a thousand” and a “shredding” of the Constitution. “If this never happened, there would be no Robert Mueller,” Hannity said. “This corruption’s so deep, it is so obvious that the special counsel needs to be shut down immediately.”

What does all this mean for the future of the special counsel and the deputy attorney general who oversees it, Rod Rosenstein? On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who remains in touch with President Trump, if saw signs the “president [was] preparing to fire Robert Mueller right now.” Priebus answered flatly: “No.”

The president may view the report as a vindication, but that’s not how Republican leadership on Capitol Hill sees it. In a Friday email to the House GOP conference, chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers offered guidance to members about how to interpret the memo. Their first two bullet points: “The Memo is NOT intended to undermine the Special Counsel: It is intended to expose past abuses of the FISA process at DOJ and FBI” and “The Memo is NOT intended to undermine DOJ or FBI: The House’s fulfillment of its constitutional responsibilities enables effective constitutional oversight of those agencies.”

Trey Gowdy, a Republican member of the House Intelligence committee who was instrumental in drafting the Nunes memo, said Sunday that the issues of misconduct at the FBI and questions of bias on Mueller’s team ought to remain separate.

“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe, for this reason,” Gowdy said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower . . . The dossier really 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.”

Gowdy also argued that the conduct alleged in the memo should not impugn the credibility of the FBI at large.

“I have tremendous respect for the bureau,” he said. “There are 30,000 employees. Let’s assume that there are five that engaged in conduct that we have questions about—that leaves a lot that are doing exactly what we want them to do.”

But Gowdy also defended the House Intelligence Committee’s decision to release the memo over the concerns of the Trump-appointed FBI director Christopher Wray.

“I’m really impressed with Chris Wray,” Gowdy said. “He’s speaking up for his agency. But Congress is the one who created FISA. In fact, Congress created the FBI. So there’s going to be good branch tension. But it also doesn’t mean Congress is not legitimate in asking these questions, because I think we are.”

One More Thing—Devin Nunes is preparing to release more reports about the FBI, he tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

“This was phase one. That resulted with a memo designed to go public. There’s not plans of additional classified information that would come forward through the same 11G process. The investigation is ongoing, I’m not sure anything would necessitate that.” “We will use our standard process for any additional information that needs to be made public. We were forced to use the 11G process because DOJ and FBI wouldn’t investigate themselves.” “If we declassify, it will go through the regular channels. More information will be coming but it will go through regular channels, not the 11G process.”

Photo of the Day

Donald Trump and Melania Trump watch the Florida Atlantic University Marching Band and cheerleaders perform prior to a Super Bowl party at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, February 4, 2018.
(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)


Exit Ramp—Another top aide, and one of the few in the Trump White House with previous experience, has left. Jeremy Katz was a senior staffer on the National Economic Council and chairman Gary Cohn’s number-two, leading the effort on tax reform. According to Bloomberg, Katz exited the White House “in recent weeks” to become president and COO of a new hedge fund started by former Viking chief investment officer Daniel Sundheim.

Like Dina Powell, another recently departed Trump aide, Katz is a veteran of the George W. Bush White House.

Must-Read of the Day—From the Times-Picayune: “The search for Jackie Wallace”

Thanks to the new HBO documentary The Final Year, we have one more chance to appreciate the Obama administration’s extreme self-regard. And thanks to the new WEEKLY STANDARD issue, we have the opportunity to read Andrew Ferguson’s piece on it. Here’s a taste:

The stars of the movie are John Kerry, U.N. ambassador Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s closest foreign policy aide. (Susan Rice, Obama’s last national security adviser, tells the audience that Obama and Rhodes enjoyed a “mind-meld” early on and apparently never decoupled.) They granted the filmmaker, Greg Barker, extensive access to their daily doings and mulled their way through countless interviews. Whether they did this in service of transparent policymaking or in hopes of memorializing their strenuous efforts on the country’s behalf is unclear. Evidence tilts toward the latter. The movie, says Rhodes, could “actually be a record that survives and that people could view 10 years from now.” Every administration acquires the personality of its leader. By 2016, Obama’s foreign policy team had taken on the president’s self-possession, his distaste for confrontation, his weakness for lofty language, and his embarrassment at all the sins committed by his predecessors; also his need to let other people know of his embarrassment. The movie reminds us that Obama’s “apology tour”—during which he parachuted into various countries, told the residents how badly they had been hurt by America, and then, unburdened, skipped lightly away—was an ongoing feature of his presidency, through to the very end. In The Final Year we see the president instructing the citizens of Hiroshima about the incredibly destructive bomb we used to kill most of their grandparents. Later he drops into Laos to remind them that they were carpet-bombed by Richard Nixon. While apologizing to the Laotians, Rhodes explains, the president also wanted to force “Americans to confront that history, which is not a very good part of our history.” You may want to take notes. When I think back over the Obama administration, I have the enduring impression of articulate, well-credentialed people talking, talking, talking. The stars of The Final Year are among the most skilled Obama talkers. When Kerry releases little bubbles of gas like “We have to be realistic about the challenges we face” he is taking a cue from the master, the president, who can say “It’s ultimately where politics, government, diplomacy has [sic] to be rooted—in that belief in a common humanity” and say it slowly, thoughtfully enough to almost persuade you he’s saying something substantial. “Bearing witness is both an instinct and a responsibility,” says Samantha Power, without clarification. Obama’s foreign policy, says Rhodes, is “engagement-focused.”

Song of the Day—“Never Going Back Again” by Fleetwood Mac

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