Nunes' list is clever ... in a way.
He combines things that are true (Trump was pursuing a Moscow Tower deal while lying about not having any Russky contacts, while Putin knew he was lying), with other things which are suspicious and problematic (Trump did owe a ton of money to Deutsche Bank after US banks stopped loaning to him). With others that were speculated upon but never really pursued. So it's a total mishmash of possible and probable Trump wrongdoing. A useful list ... in a way. Pretending it's all untrue and a smear is the hoax and tricky part.
But of course it's just a smokescreen and doesn't say anything about the investigation at hand, and the very real way Trump abused his office for political gain vis a vis Ukraine.
But when there is suspected wrongdoing or conflicts of interests, the proper course is to investigate. That's how you determine what is and isn't true, if wrongdoing occurred or not.
With Russia and the stolen emails, Putin's boys certainly helped Trump by leaking negative info on Clinton and keeping the idea of email malfeasance alive. So you investigate whether there was coordination or if Putin just helped his favored candidate.
The Mueller report would be more interesting and honest if he didn't start with the restriction that the President couldn't be charged with a crime (which is against democratic norms and merely based on a lawyer's partisan opinion. You can find a lawyer whose job depends on political appointment to write a memo supporting nearly anything, including torture). Secondly, the Mueller investigation would have been more complete if they had forced the president to testify. How he wriggled out of that without pushback is unfortunate.
Two things I'm left wondering about:
- was Trump really so worried about Joe Biden as a threat?
Or was he just going to go after everyone, much like he did in the GOP primary?
- who explained to Trump what quid pro quo meant?
He might have picked this up in real estate negotiations, but most likely someone had to explain the term to him recently.