Editorials of The Times

So this is what a partisan witch hunt really looks like.

In a demonstration of unbridled self-interest and bottomless bad faith, the Trump White House and its Republican minions in Congress are on the cusp of releasing a “memo” that purports to document the biggest political scandal since Watergate. To pull it off, they are undermining the credibility of the law enforcement community that Republicans once defended so ardently, on the noble-sounding claim that the American public must know the truth.

Don’t fall for it.

Reports suggest that the 3 1/2-page document — produced by the staff of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-White House), who somehow still leads the House Intelligence Committee despite his own record of shilling for President Donald Trump, and who is supposed to be recused from these matters — has nothing to do with truth or accountability. Rather, it appears to be misleading propaganda from people who are terrified by the Russia investigation and determined to derail it by any means necessary.

Nunes’ cut-and-paste job ostensibly shows that anti-Trump FBI investigators conspired to trick a federal intelligence court into granting them a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, because of his Russian connections — in that way corrupting the entire Russia investigation from the start. How did the investigators manage this feat? By relying on a dossier prepared by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, but hiding from the court that Steele’s work was being funded by Democrats, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and thus was hopelessly biased.

There’s so much deception and obfuscation going on here that it’s hard to know where to start.

First, Nunes and his fellow Republicans have treated the dossier like the holy grail for the Russia investigation, but it didn’t reach the FBI until the inquiry was already underway — prompted in mid-2016 by suspicious contacts between Russians and George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying about those contacts and is now cooperating with the special counsel’s investigation.

Second, the FBI didn’t zero in on Page for the hell of it. He has been in the government’s sights since 2013, when investigators learned he was being targeted for recruitment by a Russian agent. To obtain a warrant to spy on someone like Page, a U.S. citizen, investigators must show probable cause that he is working as a foreign intelligence agent. This would require reams of documentary and other evidence gathered over the years, of which the dossier would have been only one part. In addition, the 90-day warrant for Page has already been extended at least once, which means investigators had to show the intelligence court new information, beyond the dossier, justifying the basis of the original warrant.

Third, even if Nunes shows that investigators did not tell the court who financed the dossier — which originated as a Republican-backed effort during the primaries — that is hardly a scandal. It’s not clear that the court, in Page’s case, relied on the dossier at all, but even if it did, courts rarely deny warrants on the grounds that an informant had some bias. They always assume some bias exists, as it frequently does, and then weigh the information in light of that assumption.

Finally, the idea that investigators were out to fool a federal judge shows a profound ignorance of how the intelligence courts actually work, and of the degree of vetting that precedes every warrant application. As one former FBI agent explained, a conspiracy to obtain a warrant based on bad information would have required the involvement of at least a dozen agents and prosecutors, a corrupt or incompetent federal judge and the director of the FBI — all working in concert to undermine Donald Trump.

You could call it all a wild-eyed conspiracy theory, only there’s no real theory behind it. Instead, there’s a mad scramble to set off this latest smoke bomb, despite pleas to not do so from, among other people, Trump’s hand-picked FBI director, Christopher Wray. After Wray and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, failed to persuade the president’s chief of staff, John Kelly, to withhold the memo, the bureau released a highly unusual statement expressing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

That Nunes and the other Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are happy to disregard this appeal shows how far down the rabbit hole they’ve gone. Nunes hasn’t even seen the classified documents underlying his memo, and has refused to show his work even to Republican senators. Is this the behavior of someone concerned with honesty, transparency and good government?

None of this is to say the FBI and the rest of the federal law enforcement apparatus should be immune from criticism or reform. They should be subject to regular oversight and searching scrutiny. But that isn’t why Nunes is pushing his dishonest memo. As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “It’s not that the government is always right or always wrong about secrecy. It’s that Americans would be right to see this release as proof that selective classification is used more often to deceive them than to protect them.”

It would be nice to treat Trump, Nunes and their cohort as the junior high school pranksters they resemble, but what they’re doing — cynically undermining the nation’s trust in law enforcement, fostering an environment of permanent suspicion and subterfuge — is far more dangerous.

The question is whether there are any adults left in the GOP. The evidence so far is not encouraging, notwithstanding a sporadic furrowed brow in the Senate. At some level, one hopes, a sense of shame and responsibility to the republic will finally kick in. But that, too, is unlikely. Republicans from the top on down have made it clear, expressly or otherwise, that this is all about winning the political fight directly in front of them, the consequences — and the rest of America — be damned.

It’s hard not to come away from the State of the Union address without greater foreboding about President Donald Trump’s intentions toward North Korea. Signs increasingly point to unilateral U.S. military action. To which we say: Don’t.

The references to North Korea were worrying enough. Trump called its leadership “depraved.” He trumpeted his “campaign of maximum pressure” to ensure that the North does not succeed in perfecting a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the continental United States. He asserted that “past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation.” He pledged, “I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this dangerous position.”

Trump seemed to be building a case for war on emotional grounds, invoking the case of Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who died last year after being detained by North Korea. “Tonight we pledge to honor Otto’s memory with total American resolve,” he said. The Warmbier family was among the president’s guests in the gallery.

To an extent, such words were in line with his history of bellicosity toward North Korea, whose nuclear program and brutal regime are indeed grave threats and demand an effective response. Last year he threatened to answer North Korean provocations with fire and fury “the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

What made Trump’s latest comments most alarming was the context. They were delivered as South Korean efforts to dial down the tension with the North, through dialogue and joint participation in the Winter Olympics, appeared to be bearing fruit. And they came just after it was reported that the administration had abandoned a long-delayed plan to nominate a prominent Korea scholar, Victor Cha, as its ambassador to Seoul.

Cha, a senior Asia adviser in the George W. Bush administration and now a Georgetown University professor, has the credentials and experience often lacking in administration nominees. He completed the vetting process required of potential senior government officials, and South Korea had agreed to his appointment.

In the end, Cha was dumped because he voiced opposition to the administration’s threat of a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea before it can build a nuclear-armed missile able to hit the United States. One can only read this as evidence that Trump and his inner circle don’t want people with contrary views to challenge them on the most consequential decision a president can make — sending Americans to war. Has Trump already made it?

Cha took an extraordinary step by writing an opinion article for The Washington Post in which he described his objections to what’s being called the “bloody nose” strategy, a limited military strike on North Korean nuclear facilities that will supposedly persuade the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to abandon his nuclear ambitions.

Cha noted the large number of Americans living in Japan and South Korea. He said a military strike on the North would be “putting at risk an American population the size of a medium-size U.S. city — Pittsburgh, say, or Cincinnati — on the assumption that a crazy and undeterrable dictator will be rationally cowed by a demonstration of U.S. kinetic power.” Such action would only delay, not end, North Korea’s program and would provoke Kim into a vengeful effort to sell nuclear technology to any “bad actors” who will buy it, Cha argued.

Cha is no dove on North Korea. He supports tough sanctions; beefing up of missile defense systems, intelligence-sharing and strike capabilities with South Korea and Japan; and even a maritime coalition to intercept nuclear technology leaving North Korea.

It’s also important to emphasize that neither he nor Trump mentioned diplomacy, despite assertions by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that the administration is open to talks with North Korea, although under unrealistic preconditions.

There are no easy or good options with North Korea. Enforcing sanctions and blocking deadly technology from entering or leaving North Korea are necessary parts of any strategy. But so is diplomacy, including negotiations.

Trump’s preoccupation with military action and refusal to seriously pursue a diplomatic overture to North Korea are foolhardy, especially when South Korea is using North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics to defuse tensions and open up space for dialogue.

The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of Sept. 11 and has more than 240,000 troops in at least 172 countries and territories. Enough.