Eli Lake, Columnist

The Memo Is Neither 'Treasonous' Nor 'Worse Than Watergate'

Republicans allege a major flaw in the system for secretly spying on Americans, but we don't know enough to evaluate that claim.

February 2, 2018 at 11:54 PM UTC

By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

In black and white.
Photographer: Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg

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House Speaker Paul Ryan was correct. Nothing in the highly anticipated memo from the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee impugns the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller. If President Donald Trump had hoped the memo, released Friday, would discredit the probe into Russian influence of the 2016 election, he's wrong.

It turns out the story is both smaller and potentially larger than the broader investigation into Trump's campaign. It's smaller because it revolves around a relatively minor figure in the Trump-Russia affair, Carter Page, a former volunteer who was not even with the campaign when the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked a secret court to surveil him in the weeks before the election. It's potentially larger because of what the Republican allegations say about the process for obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.