The enemies list

It’s not purely coincidental that Republican lawmakers voted to release a classified memo attacking a federal investigation on the day that a ranking FBI official was forced out under pressure from President Trump. Both developments reflect an escalating campaign to discredit officials investigating the relationship between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Cheered on by Russian robots and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s disturbing call to “cleanse” the FBI, the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican members took the unprecedented step Monday night of voting to declassify the memo over Justice Department objections. Written by aides to committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Central Valley Republican and noted administration apologist, the memo apparently argues that federal surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page was inappropriate. Not surprisingly, the committee hasn’t agreed to release a dueling Democratic memo.

Also Monday, the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, followed his onetime boss, James Comey, in exiting ahead of schedule under administration pressure. The president himself has attacked McCabe in public and reportedly in private, asking about his voting history and calling his wife, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in Virginia three years ago, a “loser.”

The Nunes memo may add yet another top law enforcement official, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to the administration’s enemies list, according to the New York Times. Rosenstein, who reportedly reauthorized the Page surveillance, also appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the head of the Russia investigation and Trump’s ultimate target.

Have Nunes and company discovered a new interest in federal surveillance excesses as well as an anti-Trump conspiracy in the agency that declared Hillary Clinton to be under investigation less than two weeks before the election? It’s far more likely that they’re engaged in a cynical effort to protect Trump’s increasingly threatened hold on power — and their own.