Memo muddies the waters

It has been difficult ever since the Russia collusion thing began to decipher truth from lies, fact from fiction and reality from fantasy. The Nunes memo doesn't help clarify anything other than to underline that this whole investigation has become encrusted with political deviousness. Nunes was always devious and the way the memo has been exploited to boost the case that Trump and his team are Innocent OK doesn't at all make it so. I didn't read anything in the memo which provided material to show that all the allegations of Russia collusion are false and fanciful. It's full of innuendo but no fact facts. Rather, the memo shows that the FBI possibly wasn't as forthcoming as it should have been when it applied for a wiretap approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to bug Carter Page, Trump's former campaign adviser. It seems that the main source of "evidence" to justify a wire tap was the infamous dossier on Trump written by Christopher Steele, the former MI6 intelligence officer with a spying career in Moscow. Christopher Steele is now the best known former MI6 officer on the planet. He must be seriously regretting getting involved in putting together political dirt on Trump. He probably thought he was on a winner because nearly everyone in the universe wanted Trump to fail to become president. Apart from the 63 million Americans who voted for him of course. He and his firm were paid a lot of money - about $160,000 - to dredge up as much sex and financial filth as possible to destroy Trump. But hey, Trump won anyway, so Steele lost. Now the Steele dossier is at the heart of the latest row over the memo. If, as Nunes is saying, the dossier was all the FBI had to get the wiretap on Carter Page, then more fool the FBI. They knew the dossier was dodgy because Steele's "investigation" (not a Pulitzer prize-winner) was partly financed by a lawyer linked to the Hillary Clinton campaign. But surely that can't be true? The FBI falling for that dossier just like that? The trouble is, everything the FBI now says sounds like a group of naughty boys caught with their hand in the till. Jack Comey tweeted with outrage that the Nunes memo was a disgraceful example of a politician walking all over previously sacred classified procedures. Well who knows who is telling the truth? The fact is, the memo does not under any circumstances clear Trump or any of his compatriots of collusion with Russia. It just makes the claim that the FBI was part of a political conspiracy to make sure Hillary Clinton won the election. I don't believe that. I don't trust conspiracy theories. But Trump is not yet in the clear. Sorry, Mr President.