House Intelligence committee votes to release FISA abuse memo.

Andrew McCabe resigned early in advance of the FISA Memo's release. FBI.

The House Intelligence Committee has voted to release a memo about FISA court abuses and has been delivered to Donald Trump. The Hill. The allegations in that memo have been called "worse than Watergate" and will allegedly show bias and illegal actions by the FBI and Justice Department targeting Donald Trump as a candidate and President Elect. It will also likely show that the Steele Dossier was used to spy on Trump and other members of his campaign and family. The vote to release the memo was on party lines and a counter-memo, written by Adam Schiff (D-California), will not be released. Democrats claim that the memo will undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. 

In advance of the memo being released, a major player in the drama, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has resigned early. Reuters. McCabe was on his way out already but the action came as a surprise. It is unclear if he was asked to step down or if he did it of his own volition. It is also unclear why McCabe resigned but it is known that he is one of the targets of Justice Department Inspector General report and may be a player in the FISA Memo scandal as well. 

My Comment:

Looks like the rats are fleeing a sinking ship. My guess is that McCabe saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out as soon as he could. The FISA memo would likely have implicated him in wrongdoing and even if it didn't, the OIG report certainly would have. McCabe probably wants to get out of the public eye and retain counsel. McCabe's wife has some pretty serious ties to Hillary Clinton as well so he's the last person that should have been involved with any of this. 

As for the FISA memo, it could be the start of the biggest political scandal in US history. The idea that the FBI actively helped a presidential campaign while trying to undermine and stop a second one is unprecedented in terms of corruption. Remember, Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace just because he had his men break into DNC headquarters. In this case the Clinton campaign had the FBI do it instead.  

If that's what the FISA memo really is, it will be the end of the careers for dozens of people. Certainly, Hillary Clinton herself will be disgraced and will never run or hold for public office again. And many of the FBI players will likely go to jail. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Stzork and Lisa Page will likely all end up in prison before this is over and it's possible that even Hillary Clinton herself will go down as well. And that's just from the FISA scandal. Other investigations are brewing under the surface. 

The memo will also likely destroy Robert Mueller's Russia Probe. Though Mueller himself seems clean, many of his staff were involved in the FISA investigation and the Hillary Clinton investigation. They will be shown as biased and using Clinton oppo research to approve spying on a presidential candidate. 

Even worse, the man who ordered the Mueller probe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may be implicated as well. Remember, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself on the Russia matter.  The New York Times certainly thinks so, but they have been wrong so often on political topics I won't bother linking to them. Still, if it can be shown that the man who ordered the special consul was involved in this scandal the investigation will burn with him. 

There is a legal doctrine called "fruit of the poisonous tree" that essentially states that evidence collected illegally must be excluded at trial. That means if Rosenstein, McCabe Stzork or Page acted illegally that even if there was illegal conduct by anyone on Trump's team their would never be a trial for it. Even though there is another doctrine called "inevitable discovery" where illegally collected material is allowed at trail if the evidence would have been found anyways, it probably wouldn't apply to anyone other than Paul Manafort, who is accused of pretty obvious financial crimes. 

Once the memo is released a whole lot of people are going to have to eat some crow. If the memo makes it clear that the Russian collusion scandal was at best a politically motivated witch hunt, and at worse, a massive betrayal of justice, than it will be a huge embarrassment, not only to the Democratic Party but also to the mass media who have pushed the Russia scandal for years now. If this memo shows that all of that was false than the entire mainstream media will be revealed as a joke. 

It is unclear when this memo will be released. Trump has five days to decide and as of this post it hasn't been released. My guess is that it will be a few days. I have no doubt that Trump will release the memo but I also think that he doesn't want the news to overshadow his State of the Union Address, which will happen tomorrow. I am guessing the release will be on Wednesday, which will give enough time for people to digest the speech. I could be wrong though and the memo will be released right after I finish this post...