Samantha Vinograd, a CNN national security analyst, served on the National Security Council from 2009 to 2013 during President Barack Obama's administration and in the US Treasury Department under President Bush.. Follow her @sam_vinograd. Julian Zelizer is a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University, a CNN political analyst, New America fellow and the editor of "The Presidency of Barack Obama: A First Historical Assessment," a book that Princeton University Press plans to publish this March. He's also the co-host of the "Politics & Polls" podcast. Follow him @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are solely theirs.

(CNN) Rep. Devin Nunes launched a partisan bomb, one that is distracting the oversight panel he heads from pressing business.

Samantha Vinograd

Julian Zelizer

The committee's actual mission is critical at a time when we need more, and not less, attention on strategic national security risks.

We're all trying to read the tea leaves, with the GOP memo out and the Democratic counter memo sitting at the White House (and Trump administration officials hedging on whether and when they may approve its release). But we may be losing the forest through the trees.

The memos have become the big story in Washington, one that has obscured the fact that Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI), has wasted an extraordinary amount of time, attention and resources on alleged abuses by the FBI -- instead of doing his job.

That isn't to downplay the importance of getting the Democrats' memo out -- the misinformation spread by the Nunes memo needs a response. But both of these memos are tactical diversions from the actual work that Chairman Nunes should be doing with his committee members.