It's the bombshell that bombed, experts say about the Devin Nunes memo that was being billed by some as the earth-shattering revelation that would shake the foundations of the FBI and Justice Department, The Hill reports.
The memo authored by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee was going to shade public opinion about the special counsel investigation into Russian interference and provide vindication to President Donald Trump and his campaign.
Instead, the memo has become the dud that even White House insiders feared it would be before its release last week, The Hill reports.
"I don’t think it is the bombshell it was billed as being," Joyce White Vance, a former United States attorney told The Hill.
"The 'earth-shattering' memo has failed to shatter the earth," Republican consultant and Trump critic Rick Wilson told The Hill.
In fact, by asserting that the impetus for a Russia probe was suspicion surrounding former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, the Nunes memo bolstered the FBI and DOJ.
At the center of the storm was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants on another Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, whose trip to Russia in summer 2016 put him in the crosshairs of the FBI, who asked for repeated approvals to surveil him.
The memo's concession on Papadopoulos mitigates Nunes' accusation that the FBI and DOJ abused their power by leaning on information from an unverified Trump dossier as the basis of their FISA applications.
The memo "helps the FBI and the DOJ rather than advance the conspiracy theory that is being advanced by Nunes," former assistant attorney general Jimmy Gurulé told The Hill.
Further, several Republican lawmakers have publicly said that the memo does nothing to impugn Robert Mueller's investigation nor does it provide any vindication for Trump or his campaign.
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