From the beginning, I've been saying that the infamous Memo of Mass Distraction will not see the light of day and now we have confirmation.

This memo was never, ever intended for public consumption. It is and always has been a distraction, and it will not be released by the White House or the House Intelligence Committee.

The value of "the memo" is its secrecy. As long as it's opaque, claims of "deep state interference" and horrible acts on the part of the FBI can be claimed without any substantiation. The point isn't to expose anything, it's to stoke people's deepest fears about law enforcement and the intelligence committee in order to discredit them.

Trump has as much as admitted this. According to a CNN report earlier this week, the goal is to "expose bias within the agency's top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him."

It is incumbent upon the media and all of us not to be sucked into that charade. Donald Trump and the rest of his miserable family is up to their eyeballs in activity that will compromise this nation, and they must be exposed and prosecuted.

By the way, if you need a boost, I recommend Slate's "Slow Burn" series of podcasts about Watergate. The free version covers events; subscription bonuses are extra interviews with some of the players. It's a great refresher for those of us who lived it, and a great explainer for those who didn't. It is also a terrific reminder of how these things unfold -- slowly at first and then so fast it's hard to keep up.

We are in the acceleration phase now.