Based on all this talk about The Memo, I have compiled a list of claims from each and every side in this debate.

1. Devin Nunes is lying.
2. Adam Schiff is lying.
3. The White House is lying.
4. The FBI is lying.
5. The Department of Justice is lying.

The argument we all seem to be having is this: Which of those claims is true? I would submit that it is quite possible that more than one – or even all – of those facts are true.

Devin Nunes allegedly submitted a revised copy of The Memo that no one else on the committee had seen. It contained revisions and new information that both the majority and the minority hadn’t reviewed. This is, at best, sloppy on Nunes. In all honesty, Nunes is probably guilty of some shady ethics here. He worked on the transition team (the one being investigated by Mueller), and he recused himself from his committee at one point only to un-recuse himself later because… well, why not?

Adam Schiff, meanwhile, is the ranking Democrat. He is a member of a party that is losing its mind over the very idea that they somehow lost their power to Donald Trump. Schiff himself has been utterly rabid in all of this, wanting to make sure that the process of compiling The Memo is as difficult as possible. The Democrats do not want to risk that The Memo does actually generate sympathy toward Trump. It’s all politics, and their position in the political world is not as stable as you might be led to believe.

The White House has a vested interest in The Memo being released, because it was compiled largely by Nunes and confirms the stuff they’ve been saying since day one: Everyone is out to get Trump, and therefore they are the enemy. The White House has reviewed and apparently is okay with The Memo. Therefore it is safe to assume that it confirms what they believe (real or not).

The FBI and the Department of Justice stand to look bad, rightly or wrongly, in The Memo, so naturally they want it to stay out of sight for as long as possible. In their defense, this White House has been outright hostile to them from the get-go, so it’s understandable that they would feel the cards are stacked against them. Hell, I would, too.

The only conclusion that I can draw regarding The Memo is that it’s going to be a huge disappointment.

We’ve been talking about this thing for weeks now. The speculation about its contents has been running rampant. Its defenders shout and scream for its release while its opponents fight and scream to keep it under wraps. But… is there any claim The Memo is going to make that we don’t already know?

Here’s the punchline, folks: It’s going to be another case of confirmation bias. Those who read The Memo when it gets released sometime next week (probably) are either going to use it to confirm that the FBI is totally corrupt and The Swamp is still out to get our Lord and Savior, Donald J. Trump OR they will use it to show how the Republicans under Trump are trying to undermine faith in government institutions.

…Not that there’s anything wrong with distrusting government institutions, mind you. It’s healthy. However, we are at this point in our society where distrust of an institution falls along partisan lines nine times out of 10.

The larger point is, of course, that The Memo will mean nothing when it comes out. It will be something our tiny little attention spans scream at for a couple of days before we see a shiny nickel and take it to the store for some saltwater taffy or to the picture show. In fact, just the idea of that shiny nickel has already made me forget what I was talking about.

Whatever. It probably wasn’t that important or life-changing.