Steve Deace has a great piece on Conservative Review concerning three sub-plots he sees intertwined with the release of the House Intelligence Committee memo. I would argue there are more than three but that is a story for a different day. Here are Steve’s points:

Why was Jeff Sessions running interference for Rod Rosenstein?

However, there was his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, praising Rosenstein the morning before the memo’s release, even going off-script from his prepared remarks to do so and calling Rosenstein “the kind of quality and leadership we need.” So either Sessions was pre-emptively saying a key component of the Nunes memo is false, or Sessions was praising someone who helped weaponize the DOJ for the Clinton campaign.

Why is the FBI out to get Trump:

A former CIA counterterrorism expert appeared on CNN over the weekend to say his sources within the FBI are “ticked.” And saying things like “[Trump] has been here 13 months, while we’ve been here since 1908. We know how this game is going to be played, and we’re going to win.”

I expressed many of the same concerns as Steve in my post yesterday. At a minimum, this should not be dismissed a crazy talk given what has happened. In my view, this statement is no less troubling than anything concerning Russia because it concerns a wholesale mutiny inside a law enforcement agency.

Calls for an independent counsel:

Thus, I’m willing to meet these calls halfway. Before appointing an independent counsel to follow up on the Nunes memo, President Trump should declassify the FISA warrants and applications. That way, the public can actually see if they corroborate some of the most explosive claims of the Nunes memo or not.

I’d go one further. Trump should order the declassification, sans redactions, of Carter Page’s warrant application so we can see what was attested to, in what manner, by whom.

Read the whole article and check out Steve’s podcast on the memo.