The Russia saga just produced 'one of the darker days of the past 40 years for democracy'
A slew of revelations on Monday may amount to a turning point in the special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
On Monday, FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe stepped down and Republicans voted to publicly release a secret memo alleging surveillance abuse by top law enforcement.
Republicans insist they have the right to be concerned about potential corruption within the FBI and the DOJ. But Democrats argue that attacks against law enforcement are meant to undermine the Russia probe.
In less than 24 hours, Andrew McCabe was forced out as deputy director of the FBI, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted to release a secret memo alleging illegal surveillance by the FBI and the Department of Justice, and Democrats learned for the first time the depth of GOP-led inquiries into corruption within those agencies.
It was a series of dramatic developments that some political pundits say marks a turning point in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
"[Monday] was a big day for some people who put party over country," Walter Schaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a tweet Monday night. "It was one of the darker days of the past 40 years for democracy."
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Investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, who helped uncover the Watergate scandal in the 1970s that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, said in an interview on CNN that we may look back on this day as the "Monday night slaughter of the administration of justice and our institutions of justice in the United States."
The secret memo
Republicans believe those concerns are exaggerated. For weeks, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have called for the release of a classified memo written by the committee's chairman Rep. Devin Nunes and his aides, which allegedly outlines evidence of bias in the FBI against President Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
On Monday, the committee's Republicans voted to release the memo, clearing a key bureaucratic hurdle that makes the document's release all the more likely, pending Trump's approval.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said in a letter to Nunes last week that it would be "extraordinarily reckless for the Committee to disclose such information publicly" without first giving the FBI and the DOJ the chance to review it for the possible redaction of classified information and to correct any inconsistencies.
On Sunday, Nunes finally gave FBI Director Christopher Wray that chance. Top officials at the DOJ have not yet met with Nunes to view the memo.
McCabe forced out
A day after Wray's meeting with Nunes, McCabe announced he was leaving the FBI. The New York Times reported that Wray had expressed concerns about a soon-to-be-released DOJ inspector general report.
That report is expected to criticize aspects of the FBI's handling of its investigations into Hillary Clinton's emails and the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia, The Times noted.
Republicans, who have intensified their scrutiny over the integrity of the FBI and the DOJ in recent weeks, insist they are right to be concerned about possible corruption within top law enforcement ranks.
"There's a very legitimate issue here as to whether or not American civil liberties issues were violated," House Speaker Paul Ryan said during a press conference Tuesday, referring to the allegations of illegal surveillance by the FBI and the DOJ outlined in the secret memo. Ryan also said "there may have been malfeasance" within the FBI.
Trump has led the charge in attacking McCabe since the firing of former FBI director James Comey. He has repeatedly called McCabe's integrity into question, suggesting the FBI's second-in-command let Clinton off the hook in the bureau's 2016 email investigation because of his own political biases.
Democrats fire back
The Democrats, meanwhile, have provided a memo of their own to House members that counters Republicans' claims of anti-Trump bias and corruption within the justice apparatus.
Amid Monday's revelations, Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, slammed the Republicans' decision to publicly release their memo.
Schiff said the FBI and the DOJ didn't have a chance to review the contents of the memo, even though the FBI's head met with Nunes over the weekend to do just that.
Schiff also told reporters that Republicans had opened an investigation into the FBI and the DOJ, which he had learned about for the first time on Monday, according to CBS News.
Republicans shot back, arguing that Schiff mischaracterized what they said, and that any investigation into the FBI's conduct is part of the larger probe into Russian meddling and the 2016 election.
Also on Monday, the Trump administration announced it would not seek to impose new sanctions against Kremlin operatives for meddling, which Trump has publicly expressed doubt about, instead viewing the Russia investigations as a domestic attempt to delegitimize his presidency.
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