Joe Scarborough led an attack on the party-line Republican vote last night to release Devin Nunes' fabricated memo.
"They push to release a memo that is distorted by what's in it, and what's distorted by what is not in it. and they know that will misinform the public but they also know this, Mika -- they know that the facts that would actually allow Americans to know the entire truth about what happened, are so highly classified, that guess what, the public will never get to see those details," Scarborough said.
"And for good reason, because we don't want classified information out. So Ryan and Nunes want to release a half-truth that turns out to be a whole lie. A twisted, distorted lie. But since Ryan thinks the public will never learn the full facts, he and Nunes can skate by on their lie. They can smear the men and women of the FBI. They can smear the professionals at the Justice Department, who said this would be really reckless to put out there. They can even smear distinguished FISA judges and they can smear the entire intelligence community by extension," he said.
"All to take part in a sleazy political purge that we've been seeing unfolding before our eyes, to feed the paranoid and maniacal desires of Donald Trump. The Justice Department is right -- Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes' actions are incredibly reckless. And the speaker of the House is allowing Devin Nunes to be incredibly reckless with this information, all in the service of Donald Trump's daily efforts to obstruct justice."
He then addressed former FBI agent Clint Watts.
"They know the memo is false, they know the memo is misleading. And they know that the information that allows Americans to really know what happened will never be released. because it's highly classified.
"I mean -- talk about how they are politicizing law enforcement. Have you ever seen anything quite like this since what we all read about during Watergate?" Scarborough said.
"No. It's also just mind-blowing that it's the Republicans in this case that did it. If you remember back after 9/11, it was the Republicans that were pushing for a lot of this Patriot Act intense surveillance and increasing authorities. And in this case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA application and the renewals, essentially they're going after renewal. Rod Rosenstein approved that renewal. This was an ongoing search warrant that was out there," Watts said.
"They're going after it and cherry-picking classified intelligence. and now wanting to throw that out into the public with no context to promote conspiracies. Just think if you were an fbi agent or any agent across america right now and you're putting together an application for surveillance and you have no idea how years later, months later, some politician might pick apart some piece of information you've put in there and use it against you. it is really damaging to our country and its institutions."
As GOP never-Trumper Rick Wilson says, "Everything Trump touches dies." Including the truth.
