Russia

Analysis: House Memo Doesn't Prove Mueller Probe Is a Fraud

House Republicans and their allies have long argued that the House memo released Friday would demonstrate that the Trump-Russia investigation had its roots in an FBI fraud.

But the Republican memo doesn’t support that theory, even if everything alleged in it is true, according to analysis by NBC News. (And Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department insist that much in the memo is deeply misleading.)

Before the memo was released, House Republicans said it would show that the entire investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller was based on an improper act: a reliance by the FBI on a tainted dossier, funded by Democrats and written by a former British intelligence operative.

Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton, a right-wing activist cited on Twitter Friday by President Donald Trump, has called the Mueller investigation the “fruit of the poison tree” that “needs to be shut down.” The poisonous tree legal metaphor means, essentially, that if the government obtains evidence from illegal acts, it can’t use that evidence to prosecute somebody.

But now that the memo is out, such arguments have been called deeply into question.

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