Surprise: it wasn't actually a briefing. //

ODNI Ratcliffe was busy today. He declassified a now-infamous memo that reveals exactly what happened at an August 2016 FBI “briefing” of the Trump campaign. He gave the document to Congress and now we have it to share.

It was written by Joseph Pientka, a character whose name has popped up over and over throughout this saga. While the memo reveals nothing you likely didn’t already suspect, it does verify that the FBI was not actually trying to brief the Trump campaign. Rather, they were trying to elicit evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation targeting the Trump campaign at the time. //

The attempts to trap Trump began long before he took office, with this briefing being disguised as an attempt to warn the campaign. In reality, they were prodding for dirt they could use to push their investigation forward. Of note is that nothing of note came from the meeting. Trump did not offer evidence he was a Russian stooge, nor did Michael Flynn. It was another dead end, getting them no closer to proving nefarious Russian collusion than they were before.

That’s really why this is so damning for the FBI. This was yet another dead end they refused to pay attention to. Instead, the FBI and its band of corrupt stooges in leadership pressed forward, desperately searching for anything that could be used to stop Trump’s rise.