2016, the FBI director, James Comey, announced that he was reopening the Clinton email investigation based on what had been found on Anthony Weiner’s computer.



Guess which late October event had more effect on wavering 2016 voters: Comey’s dramatic public statement raising fresh doubts about the Democratic nominee or a secret warrant against a peripheral Trump adviser?



Who is Devin Nunes and why is he sowing confusion in the Russia inquiry? Read more

The Nunes memo makes one major concession to reality – the FBI opened its Russian investigation three months before the Steele dossier was used, in some fashion, to justify the Page Fisa warrant.



In a scene that might have been lifted from the 2016 version of All the President’s Men, a young Trump foreign policy adviser named George Papadopouloshad the foolish notion of trying to drink an Australian diplomat under the table. Instead, Papadopoulos (who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI) blabbed that the Russian government had a trove of hacked Hillary Clinton emails. Once the Australian government passed this nugget on to Washington, the FBI opened up its Russian front.



Ever since Watergate, the standard for any scandal is whether there is a smoking gun left next to a corpse. In the case of the Nunes memo, we lack a body and the gun is a child’s toy pistol.



Trump's release of Nunes memo is Nixonian – but today's GOP won't resist Read more

All this raises the question of why Nunes, the Republican majority on the House intelligence committee, Paul Ryan and Trump were so