From the Full Washington Examiner Article these are some quick datapoints regarding the memo release.

• The Steele dossier formed an essential part of the initial and all three renewal FISA applications against Carter Page.

• Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information.

• The political origins of the Steele dossier were known to senior DOJ and FBI officials, but excluded from the FISA applications.

• DOJ official Bruce Ohr met with Steele beginning in the summer of 2016 and relayed to DOJ information about Steele's bias. Steele told Ohr that he, Steele, was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected president and was passionate about him not becoming president.

• The FBI and Justice Department mounted a monthslong effort to keep the information outlined in the memo out of the House Intelligence Committee's hands. Only the threat of contempt charges and other forms of pressure forced the FBI and Justice to give up the material.

BBC will be given updates the the release here

My thoughts: It was released on a Friday afternoon. Why? This is historically when you release something that you don't want to get massive press coverage and can be quickly be forgotten. This makes me think it wasn't as smashing as the Republicans have led us to believe.

The memo does provide damning evidence that many in power were not only rooting against Trump's Presidential victory, but using their position in power to prevent it. Not exactly what some have been referring to as The Deep State but definitely having traits of what a 'Deep State' would look like.

I want to see the source document for the memo, not just the memo. CNN has been spinning all week that Representative Nunes had changed the memo contents for political purposes. They've been poisoning the well all week and liberals/progressives will quickly cling to that narrative and not believe 'their team' would ever do something so horrendous.

The left will immediately begin to spin this as not important or politically-motivated. Here's why it's important:

Politics aside, the government skirted the 4th Amendment rights of citizens based on a lie. This lie was KNOWINGLY perpetuated by people in power. This is a crime.

Why does the Dossier matter? Because Russia is what we already knew: a scam. It's a damning conviction of how easily the news media will perpetuate a lie if it aligns with their political leanings. It's the reason we shouldn't accept much truth in the media. (also, go read The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote by Sharyl Attkisson)

Read this

The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence dossier of 17 memos that were consecutively written from June to December 2016 by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. It contains allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government before and during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much of it detailing alleged cooperation between the campaign and Russians to interfere in the election to benefit Trump. The contents of the dossier were published in full by BuzzFeed on January 10, 2017. Several mainstream media outlets have criticized BuzzFeed's decision to publish the dossier

MEMO