Most of the top U.S. officials appearing in front of the Senate Intelligence committee Tuesday to discuss worldwide threats said that they did not take a position on or communicate with the White House about the release of two documents that have come under scrutiny from Democrats.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked the officials about the anti-FBI memo written by House Intelligence Republicans released this month. Wyden also asked about a Treasury Department list of Russian oligarchs, which it was required by law to release. The list was cribbed from a Forbes list of wealthiest Russian businessmen.
“My question, and any of you can respond, did any of you take a position on either of these two arbitrary classification decisions, and did any of you have any communications with the White House about either of those classification matters?” Wyden asked.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Robert Ashley and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Director Robert Cardillo all said no. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the agency was not asked to review the declassification of either document.
National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers said he raised concerns with the DNI, but it was unclear which memo he was discussing.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, meanwhile, acknowledged that the FBI “did have interaction” with the White House on the House Intel memo. He reiterated what the FBI had said publicly before: that the bureau had “grave concerns” about its release.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) followed up on the House Intel memo and asked Wray whether the information in it was cherry picked.
“I would just repeat what we said at the time, which is that we had then and continue to have now grave concerns about the accuracy of the memorandum because of omissions,” Wray said. “We provided thousands of documents that were very sensitive and lots and lots of briefings, and it’s very hard for anybody to distill all that down to three and a half pages.”
In DC-speak: the Nunes memo is a pack of lies
Thank you TPM! While constant coverage of the monkey house and the conservative circus is entertaining, I appreciate knowing that Democrats are actually trying to legislate, when they aren’t caving on core principles.
The last time Democrats had control of Congress, Nancy Pelosi led the most legislatively productive House in history. Unfortunately, you only ever read about the same conservative circus we have in control right now.
We get Nunes, we get the Porter scandal, but we don’t get this. There will be interference in the 2018 midterms along the lines of the 2016 election.
I’m curious what the various intel and law enforcement chiefs were asked about the Democrat letter drawn up in response to the Nunes memo. Trump is claiming there are specific passages that must be redacted before he’ll approve the release. Who indentified those passages for Trump? Was it the CIA or FBI or NSA? If it was why were they involved in reviewing and signing off on the Dem memo but not the Nunes memo? And if they weren’t the agencies advising Trump of needed redactions, allegedly due to nat’l security concerns, then who did make the recommendations? And how did they make those recommendations independent of input from the intel agencies?
So, they basically called Devin Nunes a lying sack of shit. Seems the heads of the intel agencies must have at least one foot in reality.
Oh, and OT, but has anyone noticed how the “Donnie Jr. white powder” story has disappeared off of the face of the earth? Funny, I thought for sure that Sean Hannity would have had a 3-hour special about how the libtards were trying to kill Trump’s family members to get revenge for Rob Porter’s wife walking into a door. Maybe Maggie Haberman has more details (and yes, I’m still calling her an asshole, and I’m not apologizing for it either!)