Three days after the release of a GOP memo that raised questions about part of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, the House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to publicly release a rebuttal memo from Democrats – that document now goes to President Donald Trump, who will decide whether it is made public or not.
“The President must now put our national security and intelligence first, and expeditiously release the Democratic memo,” said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, as she called on Mr. Trump to act.
“The American people deserve to know the truth,” Pelosi added in a statement, as Democrats continued to argue that the GOP memo from last week did not tell the whole story of investigative work by the FBI.
“I think it’s going to be hard for the White House – like it was hard on the Republicans on this committee – to block the release of this,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the top Democrat on the Intelligence panel, who has become more and more of a target of President Trump.
On Monday morning, Mr. Trump referred to Schiff as “Little Adam Schiff,” accusing the California Democrat of leaking classified material in an effort to attack the President.
While Democrats publicly called on the President to make this new memo public, they weren’t sure that would actually happen.
My sad prediction -- @HouseIntelComm Republicans just scored a major pass, knowing @POTUS will have the final say on the #DemMemo - Nyet!
— Jackie Speier (@RepSpeier) February 6, 2018
At the White House, officials weren’t saying much about what Mr. Trump might do.
“I’m not going to characterize his feeling, but just walk you through the process that we will be considering it just as we did the Nunes memo,” said spokesman Raj Shah.
Mr. Trump now has five days to decide whether or not to release the Democratic memo; last week, he gave the go ahead for the GOP memo, which charged that the FBI had not informed a secret intelligence court that it was using material from the controversial “Steele Dossier.”
Earlier on Monday, two GOP Senators released a redacted memo in which they claimed that a supporter of Hillary Clinton at the State Department was funneling information to Christopher Steele, in a bid to further undermine the findings of the former British intelligence operative.
WFTV
