This piece from conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin is worth a read:
Nunes is out of the Russia probe, and the Susan Rice spin collapses
President Trump’s wild accusation and the right-wing media’s eagerness to support the claims of the Trump White House, working in cahoots with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), that there was nefarious “unmasking” of Trump associates picked up in surveillance of Russian officials has proved to be a colossal flop. Nunes wound up discrediting himself and implicating White House staffers in a half-baked scheme to deflect attention from the president.
Right-wing outlets (from Fox News to Breitbart to the New York Post) took the bait from Nunes and his associates, dragging Susan Rice into the matter — without evidence of a crime. Indeed, no evidence of impropriety exists and no evidence ties Rice to the leaking of Michael T. Flynn’s name. Given that the White House does not want to release the documents shared with Nunes that allegedly provide the basis for its tale, we can surmise that Nunes really had no evidence of much of anything.
The blatant effort to confuse and distract from the biggest political scandal of our lifetimes — Russian efforts to manipulate our election process and potential coordination with the campaign of the beneficiary of Russia’s “active measures” — does not come as any surprise. However, certain right-wing media outlets’ willingness to echo Trump’s defamatory misdirection tactics remains as distressing as ever. (It was just this sort of echo chamber effect that Russia used during the campaign to help Trump, as Clint Watts recently explained.) Chin-stroking pundits were obliged to say, “Well, both these things are important” (as if the Rice narrative has a factual basis), and the damage thereby done. A serious investigation with extensive factual support becomes no more credible than Trump’s latest tweet.
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Indeed, the whole point of the narrative appears to be to discredit the Russia investigation (or some elements of it) by shifting the story away from Trump connections to the Russian wrongdoing to alleged wrongdoing in the investigation of the Russia matter.” They continue, “This appears to be Trump’s larger aim: To muddle the legitimacy of the intelligence community, and of FISA as a tool in this context, all with the aim of delegitimizing the Russia investigation and, perhaps, of delegitimizing broader internal executive branch checks on the presidency.” The episode underscores the degree to which we are vulnerable when those in positions of authority — Nunes, Trump, Ryan, the leakers — abuse their trust and turn the most consequential national security investigation of our lifetimes into a circus.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/04/06/susan-rice-is-a-pawn-in-trumps-effort-to-tear-down-the-system/