Memo leaves Trump with little ammunition against Mueller

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump was eager to have a Republican memo alleging bias in the Russia probe released to the public, several people around him said. Now that’s it out, Trump took to Twitter to promote it for that purpose — although the document may not be as effective as the president wants it to be.
It didn’t, for one thing, touch on the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and didn’t give Trump much pretext to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s overseeing the inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Still, Trump tweeted from his Florida resort that “this memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” his first public comment since the memo’s release. Trump added that “the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on.
The partisan memo by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee alleges FBI and Justice Department officials involved in the probe into Trump and Russia in 2016 failed to tell a secret court that a dossier they cited to get a surveillance warrant on a low-level Trump adviser was paid for by Democrats.
While Democrats slammed the findings as inaccurate and misleading, the memo was enough for some Republican partisans to call for shutting down the entire investigation into Russian interference in the campaign and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it.
Several prominent Republicans, however, sent the White House clear signals they wouldn’t back any effort to use the memo as grounds to disrupt Mueller’s work or get rid of Rosenstein.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who facilitated the memo’s release, said it should be viewed narrowly and not used “to impugn the integrity of the justice system and FBI.”
That’s also the tack taken by House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, who’s also the only Republican on the House Intelligence Committee who’s seen the classified intelligence used to write the memo. “As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not — in any way — discredit his investigation,” Gowdy wrote on Twitter.
Mueller’s investigation has already ensnared four Trump associates, with indictments against former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, and guilty pleas from campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Republican Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona said Rosenstein and others were “traitors” for signing applications for surveillance warrants against Carter Page, the former Trump adviser, and said he would send a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging their prosecution.