Note: The New York Times confirmed Nunes’s assertion of foreign intelligence reports on the Trump transition team that were created and monitored by the Obama administration. It remains unclear whether these include electronic surveillance of his team’s communications or if they only used foreign communications about Trump’s team. Further, it contradicted Nunes’s claim that his source wasn’t a White House staffer, though at least one former official in that role said days ago she wouldn’t have described herself as a ‘staffer.’

Following Nunes’s Wednesday press conference a whole lot of news has come out about the investigation, though none concerning case developments. Political recriminations proliferated after it was confirmed that Nunes met his source at the White House grounds the night before. He claims that he needed to use the White House facilities because Congress doesn’t “have networked access to these kinds of reports,” stating the reports could only be accessed on an executive branch network and not easily transported to Congressional secure facilities. I haven’t seen any informed rebuttals of this explanation, but even Nunes seemed to understand the poor optics of the situation. After refusing to give any details on his source, he had no problem divulging some in an attempt of self-preservation, revealing his source to be ‘an intelligence official.’ This was just the beginning of political brawl on the intelligence committee. Later that week the committee delayed, not canceled as was commonly asserted, the upcoming appearance of Sally Yates and a few other Obama officials. The official line is that it was done in order for the committee to recall the FBI and NSA directors to the hill for a closed session, but Democrats and their allies have impugned this explanation with alternative reasons. The Washington Post made dishonest claims that the White House tried to stop Yates from testifying, but the facts don’t back up that narrative. The DOJ requested that Yates clear her testimony concerning executive communications with the White House. In response, Yates’s attorney sent a letter to the White House justifying her position on the upcoming testimony and requested that they notify her in the next few days if they saw a problem. The White House never objected in that period and has since said openly they have no issues with her testifying. Some raised suspicions that the decision to delay her testimony came the same day Yates’s attorney sent the letter to the White House along with reports that her testimony contradicted the White House regarding the Flynn controversy. However, both Nunes and the White House have denied any coordination or communication on the issue. In response to the cancellation, head Democrat Adam Schiff refused to assent to recalling Comey to the committee. This has devolved into calls for Nunes to step down, while Nunes has delayed much of the committee’s hearings until Comey and Rodgers can return to testify.

At this point, there is no real debate over whether or not the Obama administration surveilled the Trump transition, they did. The question now comes down to whether or not the surveillance was justified and proper, and there are serious questions to doubt this. On the other hand, the Democrat’s concerns over collusion between Russia and Trump increasingly look like red string conspiracy theories. Purportedly there is one piece of non-circumstantial evidence, but no indication on what that piece of evidence is. Beyond that, it’s entirely based on invented narratives spun from circumstantial evidence.

So who is really ‘blowing up’ the investigation? There are two competing partisan theories. The Democrats contend that the GOP is stalling and compromising the investigation to delay and obfuscate damaging revelations about the Trump administration. The Republicans, on the other hand, claim Democrats are trying to undermine the investigation in order to stop any potentially damaging information about the Obama administration’s investigative techniques from becoming public. It could well be that the GOP wants to prevent the investigation from going forward, fearing what it might find, but with the FBI and Senate also investigating, any success would be very short lived. It seems more likely that the Democrats are taking advantage of Nunes’s unforced error to wrest control of the investigation from the GOP. The calls for an independent commission investigating Russian interference have seen increasing prevalence and have been amplified by media voices. Despite the seeming popularity of the idea, it would be politically foolish for the Republicans to cede these demands. They currently have the ability to drive the investigation in the manner they see fit, which means they can focus on the surveillance of Trump’s team. Because of this, the Democrats are attempting to create a no win situation. Either the GOP ends up turning the investigation over to a select committee or any of their conclusions will be tainted by partisanship.