Democrats say House Republicans join effort to obstruct Mueller

Bloomberg

Democratic lawmakers circulated talking points in which they say House Republicans are “now part and parcel to an organised effort to obstruct” Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Until now, we could only really accuse House Republicans of ignoring the President’s open attempts to block the Russia investigation,” Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee said in the six-page letter.
The document provided a point-by-point rebuttal to the Republican memo alleging bias in Mueller’s probe of possible links between Russia and Trump’s campaign. That memo, from Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was released after approval to do so from President Donald Trump.
“With the release of the Nunes memo — a backhanded attempt to cast doubt on the origins of the Special Counsel’s investigation — we can only conclude that House Republicans are complicit in the effort to help the President avoid accountability for his actions and for the actions of his campaign,” the Democrats said. The letter, obtained by Bloomberg, comes as the official House Intelligence panel rebuttal to Nunes’s memo remains classified pending a vote by the committee and approval by Trump. The talking points were prefaced with an introduction by New York Representative Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who termed the Nunes memo “deeply misleading.” Nunes’ memo purports to show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department improperly relied upon a dossier paid for by Democrats to obtain a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, a one-time low-level adviser to the Trump campaign.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Nunes memo needed to be released because rights may have been violated. Trump tweeted that the memo “totally vindicates” him in the Russia probe, which he called an “American disgrace.” The Democratic rebuttal contended that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court activities discussed in the Nunes memo predated Rod Rosenstein’s tenure as deputy attorney general and therefore can’t be used as a basis to remove him, as some Republican lawmakers and conservative critics have urged.
The Democrats said the FISA court found probable cause to believe that Page was an agent of the Russian government, and that nothing in the Nunes memo disproved anything in a dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele used as part of the FISA application.