White House spokesman Raj Shah said Monday morning that should the House vote to release a memo crafted by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA), the White House will conduct a national security review of the memo to determine whether it should be released to the public.
“If that happens, we’re going to have a whole national security review and look at this document and then make a determination. The President will make a determination,” Shah said on CNN’s “New Day.”
On Sunday, White House legislative aide Marc Short said that Trump is “inclined” to release the memo, but the President has not yet read the memo, Shah revealed Monday morning.
The memo reportedly purports to show that FBI officials misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court when asking for approval to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page by failing to reveal that one of the FBI’s sources, dossier author Christopher Steele, was being paid by Democrats. However, the FBI did not rely solely on Steele for its FISA application. A new report in the New York Times reveals that the memo claims Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein approved the decision to surveil Page.
House Republicans have been lobbying for the memo to be released to the public, but must go through a lengthy process since the document contains classified information. Democrats have argued against releasing the memo and have accused Republicans of crafting a misleading memo that merely seeks to bolster GOP anti-FBI rhetoric.
Justice Department officials have also warned against the memo’s release, though House Republicans have not granted their requests to review it. Shah on Monday morning indicated that the White House would also leave the Justice Department out of its review process if the House votes to release the memo.
“The constitutional process as laid out involves the house of representatives, the House Intelligence Committee and the White House and the President of the United States. The Department of Justice doesn’t have a role in this process,” he said.
There are people at DOJ who are quite happy to hear this.
Glory be! Who would have ever thought it would be so difficult to release a memo when you control all three branches of government?! Why, you would almost think it was…theater!
Just as a PR matter: why don’t the Democrats have their own internal memo? Why is it always Rs who have the low cunning to cook up whatever stunt is required to dominate the headlines? Why can’t the Ds produce their own ‘secret memo’ in which it’s concluded that Nunes and Ryan are guilty of treason? Why can’t the question of the day become: Are Nunes and Ryan guilty of treason?
(Just off the top of my head. Not advocating this course of action as such.)
Like everything about this Maladministration, it would be funny if it weren’t all just so sad…
OH FFS. Why don’t they send it on to the White House by REGISTERED LETTER once they vote? That’s the ultimate seal of seriousness and great-big-adult intentions. The sad thing is anyone so lost as to not already have his or her mind made up about this gang will vaguely recall there was some business that made the FBI questionable somehow in all this. It looks ridiculous to us but there are people this works on, like the Nigerian general thing.