Even for this political era, it's been a whirlwind 12 hours. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday night that senior FBI officials knew emails from Hillary Clinton had been discovered on Anthony Weiner's laptop for weeks before they notified Congress, which Republicans will seize on as further evidence that the FBI was in the tank for Clinton. This ignores that "Justice Department guidelines recommend against taking significant public actions shortly before an election that could sway the outcome," in the Journal's words, and that FBI Director James Comey ultimately did inform Congress 10 days before the election, an apparent breach of protocol. That's arguably a more damaging time for the emails to become public than when they were first discovered on September 28. The emails were ultimately almost all duplicates of messages the FBI had already reviewed, though Comey did not know that at the time of the letter.

You also might not hear many Republicans reference this:

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BREAKING: Peter Strzok, the FBI agent accused by GOP of having "treasonous" anti-Trump bias, supported re-opening the Clinton email investigation in fall 2016 and helped write the letter (signed by Comey) that was released days before the election. https://t.co/RkOIkZ2x6W — Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) January 31, 2018

So Peter Strzok, whose texts with an FBI lawyer he was involved with have been cited by Republicans for weeks as evidence the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation are biased against Trump, played a key role in perhaps the most damaging event of the campaign for Clinton.

Meanwhile, through that whole pre-election period, the FBI also neglected to make public that it was also pursuing a counterintelligence investigation against associates of Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump. That's where some of the other news of these last 12 hours lives. The Wall Street Journal also reported that Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser with extensive ties to Russia, did not wander onto the radar for U.S. intelligence agencies during the election. They had been watching him for years:

The full extent of the evidence regarding Mr. Page that the Justice Department submitted to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—a secret judicial panel that approves surveillance warrants against suspected agents of foreign powers—isn’t clear. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that the warrant included material beyond research compiled by Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence official. What is known from court documents and testimony by Mr. Page before Congress is that the former Trump aide has been known to U.S. counterintelligence officials dating back to at least 2013, nearly three years before he joined the Trump campaign.

So we already knew that U.S. intelligence was not just looking into Page because of the infamous Dossier. Now we know Page was a longtime person of interest, dating back to around the time Donald Trump was tweeting relationship advice at Robert Pattinson. That's relevant to us now because the surveillance of Page is at the center of The Memo, a report drawn up by House Intelligence Committee staffers with the heavy input of Devin Nunes, the committee chair.

Carter Page speaks to the media after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee. Getty Images

(Nunes was previously seen playing Secret Agent Man to meet someone on the grounds of the White House to receive leaked information that purported to show surveillance abuses aimed at Trump associates. Nunes later lied publicly to conceal that senior White House officials had given it to him. Nunes' nominal role is to provide oversight of the White House; instead, he has been running interference in the Russia probe on its behalf for nearly a year.)

The Memo asserts the government abused its surveillance powers to go after Page during the 2016 campaign, via the Journal:



The White House is expected to release as early as this week a memo detailing what Republicans allege were surveillance abuses during the 2016 campaign. Republicans say the memo, written by the GOP staff on the House Intelligence Committee, shows that prosecutors used information gleaned from an ex-British spy—who was paid by a research firm hired by Democratic opponents of Mr. Trump—in their application for a secret court order to monitor Mr. Page. Mr. Page hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.

Except, as noted, Page was a longtime target, well before The Dossier existed. The Memo, and the justifications for its release, are built on a fundamental falsehood. According to the FBI—and the Democratic minority on Nunes' committee—that's true in more ways than one:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday urged the White House not to release the memo, citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Democrats have also said the document is misleading and cherry-picked.

The news, and Nunes' cut-rate James Bond behavior, do not end there. Apparently, Nunes was not content to craft and engineer the release of The Memo under questionable pretenses. After the House voted to declassify it and send it to the White House for final approval, according to Democrats, Nunes doctored The Memo further:

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BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release. pic.twitter.com/llhQK9L7l6 — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 1, 2018

This means the White House is currently reviewing a document for release that the House did not actually approve for release—because they voted on a different document. In a true shocker, Nunes apparently lied outright to his fellow commitee members about this one:

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In a formal meeting, I asked Chairman Nunes not once, but twice, if his memo would be released precisely as we reviewed it. He said yes. Then altered it. pic.twitter.com/vWa1oFz9qX — Jim Himes (@jahimes) February 1, 2018

Before all this even happened, Nunes was cryptic, to say the least, when Democrats on his committee asked whether the White House had any input on the initial Memo:

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I ask Chairman Nunes & my Republican colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee: What is more important, protecting the President or the American people? pic.twitter.com/RkAN2IfBUY — Mike Quigley (@RepMikeQuigley) January 31, 2018

So The Memo alleges the intelligence community—including, presumably, the FBI counterintelligence division—was biased against the Trump campaign and abused surveillance powers to go after his associate Carter Page. But Page was on the FBI's radar for years prior, The Memo is allegedly full of cherry-picked information, it may have been crafted in coordination with the White House, and Democrats are accusing Nunes of altering it after it was approved for release by the House. This all seems above-board, particularly when you hear this:

And it appears it's full steam ahead:

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SCOOP - @FoxNews IS TOLD @realDonaldTrump WILL DECLASSIFY THE FISA MEMO AND TRANSMIT BACK TO HPSCI TOMORROW MORNING FOR RELEASE — John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) February 1, 2018

Anyway, we'll always have the wise words of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:



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When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing https://t.co/SIoAxatCjp — Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) November 3, 2016

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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