By Bay Dotson
Just over a week ago, President Trump authorized the release of a highly classified and highly controversial document. Nicknamed the “Nunes Memo” for the Congressman who created it, the four-page document has become a microcosm of the contention within and across party lines over Russian interference in the 2016 election and campaign. Devin Nunes, whose staff members wrote the memo, is the Republican representative from California’s 22nd district. Nunes is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a historically significant council “charged with oversight of the United States Intelligence Community,” that works in tangent with the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee has become representative of the rift between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as most Republicans pledge loyalty to President Donald Trump, while Democrats continue to fight any legislation supported by the president.
The Nunes Memo is a document that summarizes what its creators see as the illegal lengths to which the United States intelligence services have gone in order to expose Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia. Republican members of Congress and the White House argued that the Democrat’s desire to keep the memo classified showed the necessity for the American people to have access to it. Democrats and intelligence officials wanted the document to stay classified because of its sensitive nature and their inability to address the “other side” of the issue.
President Trump approved the release of the document two weeks ago, but Congress blocked the release of the Intelligence Committee Democrats’ memo, which addressed the inaccuracies of the Nunes memo. Republican Congressmen had hyped the memo up to the point that many Republican voters believed that the information it contained would be enough to indict intelligence officials on criminal charges. However, the memo does no such thing. Its contents are not the shocking revelations promised, but instead further it demonstrates how far Republicans will go to discredit the Mueller Investigation, and reminds us again that the President is not afraid to test the American intelligence system.