Politics at Its Worst

The Inflatable Rooster's tweet yesterday about changing the libel laws to snag the New York Times was no doubt instigated by a reading of yesterday's NYT.

Last week, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Devin Nunes, announced dozens of intelligence reports that inappropriately included details on President Donald Trump's transition. This week, he told me that his source for that information was an intelligence official, not a White House staffer.

It turns out, he misled me. The New York Times reported Thursday that Nunes had two sources, and both worked for the White House.

[...]

By misrepresenting how he obtained information worthy of investigation he has handed his opposition the means to discredit it.

[...]

Nunes is leading a double investigation of sorts. His committee is probing ties between the Trump campaign and Russia's influence operation against the 2016 election. It's also looking into whether Barack Obama's White House inappropriately spied on Trump's transition.

The chairman told me Thursday that elements of the Times story were inaccurate. But he acknowledged: "I did use the White House to help to confirm what I already knew from other sources."

  Eli Lake @ Bloomberg

Other sources being inside the White House, too, perhaps. Or maybe just inside his head.

This is a body blow for Nunes, who presented his findings last week as if they were surprising to the White House. He briefed Trump, after holding a press conference on Capitol Hill.

[...]

The sources named by the Times work for the president. They are political appointees. It strains credulity to think that Trump would need Nunes to tell him about intelligence reports discovered by people who work in the White House.

Everyone and everything in and about this administration strains credulity. But there's another issue that makes this whole thing problematic.

Ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed top-secret documents to the Guardian and the Washington Post, civil liberties advocates, progressives and libertarians have raised alarms about the ability of U.S. eavesdroppers to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This is through what is known as "incidental collection," when a U.S. person is on the other end of a communication that is legally monitored by the U.S. government.

Until now, that issue has not had much traction in Congress. Republicans and Democrats -- with few exceptions -- have voted to reauthorize the law without making it harder to collect and disseminate the names of U.S. persons caught up in this surveillance.

[...]

[L]ike most government activities that are shrouded in secrecy, this snooping is prone to inevitable abuse.

[...]

The Wall Street Journal reported at the end of 2015 that members of Congress and American Jewish groups were caught up in this surveillance and that the reports were sent to the White House. This occurred during a bitter political fight over the Iran nuclear deal. In essence the Obama White House was learning about the strategy of its domestic political opposition through legal wiretaps of a foreign head of state and his aides.

[...]

Nunes has sought to investigate whether something similar happened with regard to the Trump transition. So far, he has not provided any evidence.

[...]

Now Nunes says he has seen intelligence reports that contained details about Trump's transition that were distributed widely inside the government, including to the White House.

[...]

The distribution of details about incidentally wiretapped Americans has certainly had political effects, and appears politically motivated.

"Appear."

Congress is expected to decide in the fall whether to reauthorize or amend the FISA law.

If we had a Congress.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.