Democrats who raged against the release of a GOP memo alleging misconduct at the FBI on Friday tempered their concern with a dash of relief — and some greeted the document as an outright bust.

Drafted to portray the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russian election meddling as tainted by bias against President Donald Trump, the memo ultimately bolstered Democrats’ defense of the probe by confirming that it did not begin based on the contents of an unverified anti-Trump dossier.


And the memo offered little new evidence to undercut Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russia’s disruption campaign, despite Trump’s reported interest in the document as grounds to provoke further public uncertainty about the impartiality of the investigation.

“Republicans have overplayed their hand, and they have created a frenzy about this memo" against the urging of intelligence and law enforcement officials, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) a member of the House intelligence committee, said in an interview.

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“Because the person who is a person of interest here is the president of the United States," Speier added, "and in his mind this was going to derail the investigation. It’s not going to derail the investigation.”

Still, any reassurance Democrats derived from the substance of the memo was counterbalanced by apprehension about Trump and congressional Republicans continuing to seize on it. The intense media coverage of the GOP memo, fueled in part by the fierceness of Democratic pushback, has raised its profile to an extent that Trump may be more inclined to use it to further up the pressure on DOJ.

“It's pretty clear that the memo wasn't worth the paper it's printed on,” one Senate Democratic leadership aide said. “But we know that the president will use anything at his disposal to try to undermine the investigation, no matter how thin it is.”

Democrats remain incensed by the process House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) used to release the previously classified memo with a green light from Trump, while keeping them from issuing their response. The minority members said theirs would have provided context lacking in Nunes' document.

Nonetheless, the substance of the GOP memo left Democrats unimpressed.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) slammed it as “garbage evidence” assembled by House Intelligence Committee Republicans “to provide cover for the president” to strangle Mueller’s probe.

“This memo seems to do more to confirm the legitimacy of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign than to undermine it,” Murphy said in a statement.

The document revealed that the FBI's probe began not with the controversial dossier — financed by Democrats and commissioned by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele — but with a tip from Australian officials who had received intelligence from Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos during a random April 2016 encounter. It also indicated that no surveillance warrants were issued for Page until after he left the Trump campaign. And it left unchallenged much of the substance of the Steele Dossier.

Some Republicans and FBI allies bolstered the Democrats' critique.

"This is it?" former FBI director James Comey asked after the memo emerged.

"I doubt this was the intent, but the House GOP and the Trump admin just blew up the right’s favorite conspiracy theory," argued National Review conservative commentator David French. "The Russia investigation isn’t the fruit of the poisonous dossier; it existed before. The decks are now cleared for Mueller."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has joined fellow Republicans in calling for a second special counsel at DOJ to investigate internal misconduct in probes of the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns, also said plainly Friday that "nothing in the memo released today undercuts Mr. Mueller’s investigation."

House Republicans were left as the most vocal proponents of the memo's contents, arguing that it revealed abuses of the FBI's spying authority to target an American citizen. They defended their ability to conduct oversight of the intelligence community and said laying the facts out — despite Democratic protests that their competing memo had not yet been cleared for release — was a show of transparency.

Whether the memo moves public opinion on the DOJ investigation remains to be seen. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month found that 55 percent of independent voters view the probe of potential collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign as legitimate, versus 41 percent deeming it a "witch hunt."

As for the long-term effects of the memo, Speier surmised that the attack on law enforcement's credibility has "Vladimir Putin ... grinning ear to ear."