Release the Schiff memo
Now that the House Intelligence Committee has unanimously approved release of a Democratic memo on the 2016 granting of a warrant to surveil former Trump adviser Carter Page, the President can either double down on the poisonous propaganda he and Rep. Devin Nunes have spread thus far, or allow more light to be shed on the secret court’s decision.
He must choose the latter course, and okay the declassification of Rep. Adam Schiff’s 10-page memo.
Last week, Nunes and his Republican allies voted to release a thin, distortion-filled document omitting many key facts about the FBI’s application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, and downplaying many others.
Then, right on cue, the President declassified Nunes’ product, without any redactions — and exploited its contents, insisting it tarred Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference (it didn’t).
On Saturday, Trump claimed Nunes’ memo “totally vindicates ‘Trump’ ” — yes, he put his own name in quotation marks — adding “their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction” (sic).
The whole sordid affair was enough to turn off even hardened GOP conspiracy-mongers like formerly Benghazi-obsessed Rep. Trey Gowdy, who, speaking sense, said, “I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe.”
Now Trump has five days either to allow the Schiff memo’s release or refuse to declassify it.
Which will answer the question: Does the President truly believe in enlightening Americans about how this supposed abuse of surveillance authority happened, or is he solely interested in helping fellow Republicans use their privileged access to sensitive secrets as a weapon?
Nunes essentially portrayed the FBI as being thisclose to East Germany’s Stasi, suggesting that, because of political bias, the FBI improperly withheld from the court the fact that Christopher Steele — an ex-spy whose work the bureau used to substantiate its allegations — was financed by Democrats and harbored anti-Trump sentiments.
The Schiff memo reportedly adds critical context about how the FBI briefed the judges considering the Page warrant applications.
And reportedly undermines Republican assertions that Andrew McCabe, then the deputy director of the FBI, told the House Intelligence Committee that but for Steele’s dossier, Page would never have been surveilled.
Out with it. Out with it all, with whatever redactions are necessary to protect sources and methods and national security.
It is for very good reason FISA warrants start secret and are meant to stay that way. But now that Trump and his allies have, in dastardly fashion, abused their authority to tell the skewed story they wish to tell, it would be a profound disservice to repress a counterweight to that narrative.
Trump being Trump, rather than engage with the substance of Schiff’s argument, he has only hurled juvenile invective, calling the California Democrat “little” while branding him a liar and a leaker who “must be stopped.”
As usual, the liar and leaker in the White House protests — and projects — too much.