Even Fox News is now admitting that the phony Republican memo meant to undercut the Russia investigation does not ‘vindicate’ Donald Trump, as the president wishfully thinks.
According to Judge Andrew Napolitano, the memo “gins up [Trump’s] base” but it has no legal significance. Instead, Napolitano said, it has given the president a “false sense of confidence.”
The full interview:
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“I don’t think he should have a false sense of confidence,” Napolitano said on Fox News, referring to Trump’s reaction to the memo. “I understand why he says things like that, it gins up his base and it may help him politically, but legally it’s of no moment.”
The judge added: “I think the Republicans over-promised and under-delivered with their memo. We’ll see if the Democrats do the same thing.”
Believe it or not, Napolitano is correct. There was nothing in the Nunes memo that did anything to change the trajectory of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia and whether he obstructed justice.
Instead, the memo was a desperate Republican effort to use an obscure and credible FISA warrant on former Trump campaign adviser and Russian operative Carter Page to undercut the investigations into the president. It left out key facts, fudged reality and made anybody who read it just a little bit less smart.
Luckily, the House approved a Democratic memo meant to set the record straight and essentially serve as a fact-check to the Trump-approved GOP document. It remains to be seen whether the president will approve the release of that memo.
Ultimately, as Napolitano noted on Trump TV, the GOP memo serves as a nice sugar high for tin foil hat-wearing Trump supporters, but it will not faze special counsel investigators as they continue to tighten the legal noose around the President of the United States.
As The Hill noted on Monday, “Trump called Napolitano a ‘very talented legal mind’ during a press conference last year.” With the Fox News judge shrugging his shoulders over the latest Trump-GOP ploy, it’s only a matter of time before the president gives him a derogatory Twitter nickname.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
