Trump: Dems’ memo a political ploy

Rebuttal missive full of info to force delay

President Trump is accusing Democrats who are pushing for the release of an intelligence memo of sending him a document loaded with classified information that they knew he’d have to send back for edits — a move he says is all about scoring political points after he signed off on a similar Republican memo earlier this month.

“The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency,” Trump wrote in a tweet yesterday. “Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!”

White House counsel Donald McGahn said Friday that Trump is unable to declassify the memo written by Democrats because it “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages,” and he added the president “stands ready to review any subsequent draft.”

The memo was written in response to a controversial fourpage document released Feb. 2 by Republicans on the House intelligence committee that was primarily focused on how a 2016 dossier on Trump and his associates was used to take out surveillance warrants on one of his campaign advisers.

Trump released the memo from Rep. Devin Nunes against the wishes of the FBI and Justice Department.

At the time, Democrats complained that the Republican memo didn’t give an accurate picture of how the warrants were supported and whether it was disclosed that political organizations bankrolled the dossier. They said they wrote their memo to correct the record and include what was omitted from the Republican document.

The GOP-led House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Monday to release the

memo from Democrats.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s ranking member, fired back at Trump’s claim

that the Democratic memo was all about politics.

“Mr. President, what you call ‘political’ are actually called

facts,” Schiff tweeted, “and your concern for sources and methods would be more convincing if you hadn’t decided to release the GOP memo (“100%”) before reading it and over the objections of the FBI.”