Last week, Republicans in Congress sent out this memo, outlining all the ways the party plan to defend the president against impeachment.

With its congressional seal and its attached footnotes, this memorandum looked formal and serious. But the language inside

betrayed a kind of paranoia. It talked about intelligence committee hearings being held in a

basement bunker. The words impeachment inquiry were bracketed in scare quotes.

I now recognize ranking member Nunes for any remarks you may wish to make.

Watching the impeachment hearings last week, it was like watching this memo come to life.

In a July open hearing of this committee following publication of the Mueller report,

the Democrats engaged in the last ditch effort to convince the American people that President Trump is a Russian agent.

The ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes.

He called the impeachment a spectacle.

He said it had a cult-like atmosphere.

So Americans can rightly suspect that his phone call with President Zelensky was used as an

excuse for the Democrats to fulfill their Watergate fantasies.

But I'm glad that on Wednesday, after the Democrats staged six weeks of secret depositions in the basement of the Capitol

like some kind of strange cult, the American people finally got to see this farce for themselves.

I made the comment that if you had tuned in to the impeachment hearing for the first time

and had genuinely never heard Republicans and Democrats

presenting their talking points. If you launch Devin Nunes, I think you'd be very confused.

Shane Harris covers intelligence and national security for the Washington Post.

It was kind of a mashup of the Devin Nunes' greatest hits.

Shane says, to understand the Republican strategy here, it helps to listen to

listen as he bounces from argument to argument, some that sound legalistic, others that

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