Strategy

I learned to play chess in the third grade.  My teacher, taught us the basic rules and then turned us loose in a round robin chess tournament. I remember that I did pretty well, which was a change from most competitive things I did at that time.  The basic level of chess is that you try to take all of your opponents pieces and eventually you have his king cornered on a mostly empty board. Checkmate and stalemates are things that happen only after a long war of attrition.  One of the most rudimentary elements of strategy is the trap, tempting your opponent into moving one of his pieces into danger by dangling some reward.  Maybe it's the chance to get your king in check or the possibility of capturing your queen.  A good player is wary of traps, a really good player is thinking at least 4 or 5 moves ahead.  Third graders can't resist the cheese, at all.  What I remember about those early days was that I learned about traps, I learned not to take the obvious opportunity.  I learned to conceal my real strategy behind layers.
I'm still not a chess master, I just don't play enough, but I still look out for traps.  I'm not sure yet, but I think there is a giant trap in the process of being sprung right now.  If it's true then our democracy is in better shape than I thought, if it's not true, it really doesn't change my pessimism much.  Here's what I think might be going on vis-a-vis the Nunes Memo and the Russia investigation.  The House Intelligence Committee makes a show of whether or not to release this memo, going against every precedent, going against opposition invective and even reservations from allies.  They say they're going to do it, along party lines and they give the Executive Branch its chance to squash it.  But they know that's not going to happen because, ostensibly there is a thin veneer of vindication for the occupant of the oval office.  The Nunes Memo says that there might have been some impropriety in obtaining a FISA warrant to do surveillance on Carter Page, a Trump adviser during the campaign and one of the people who has been shown to be clearly involved with the Russian intelligence apparatus.
The memo does not exonerate Page, nor cast doubt upon the reality of Russian interference, but it gives a certain person what he obviously sees as a chance to "win" something. In this case it amounts to little more than dangling a solitary pawn out there to be swooped up by a bigger, more powerful piece.  The Trump administration can crow victory and Fox News can chirp about how the FBI is really in the pocket of the Clinton machine.  Then, the House Intelligence Committee comes back with a rebuttal memo, this one, I'm betting, is more detailed and probably more substantive than the Nunes Memo.  They just voted to release it, unanimously.  Let that sink in, like you see that knight just waiting to knock the queen down.  The Democrats and the Republicans, including Adam Schiff, Nunes himself and Mr. Benghazi Trey Gowdy, just unanimously voted to release another document that rebuts the bait.
Now that has to go to Trump for approval or disapproval.  If he squashes this one, it's a catastrophe, he is deeper in the mud of public opinion, because it looks like he has something to hide (which is already what a lot of this looks like).  If he releases it, and it is what I suspect it is: a confirmation that the FBI is actually not a bastion of liberal conspiracies against the POTUS, he and all of his cronies look like fools and he has even less cover for attacking Robert Mueller, who very well might be the piece that will eventually put this foolish king in checkmate.
I'm not a politician, but I have watched The West Wing and House of Cards, and I have played chess for a long time; this seems to me like a trap being sprung.  The people in Congress, Republicans included, are no fans of Trump.  They are also the branch of government most capable of putting him in check. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that they all know this.  I'm going to assume that when he calls people who don't stand for his speech or the national anthem treasonous, and when he vents his venom at the free press, they know that this is not acceptable for the leader of the "free world." I'm going to assume they are all R and D alike, as weary as I am of being embarrassed by porn star affairs and toilet tweets.  I'm going to assume that they know that obstruction of justice, not collusion, is really the checkmate move here, and that he doesn't actually have to succeed in obstructing justice to be guilty of trying.  You don't have to walk out the door with money and a Slurpee to be guilty of armed robbery if you hold up a 7-11 clerk at gunpoint.  I'm also going to assume that the House Intelligence Committee knows quite a bit more about what Mueller knows and doesn't know than I do.
I also wonder if it's entirely unrelated that the much ballyhooed growth of the Dow Jones has just gone in the tank big time over the past few days. If Trump doesn't have a blooming stock exchange I fear his popularity will go even lower than it already is. He might find himself suddenly surrounded by enemies on all sides, I mean for real, not just in his head.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this.  It could be a "nothingburger." But if it does turn out to be a move by a seemingly incompetent legislature to do their job of restraining a dangerously unstable Executive, well then rope-a-dope I say, rope-a-dope. I'm still doubting that this ends in an impeachment, but it might very well result in fool-king Trump running scared around the board for the next three years, thereby severely limiting the damage he can do and leaving him no chance of actually winning.