The mainstream media got all wee-weed up (to use a phrase from Barack Obama) about a 10-page memo penned by Democrats intended to rebut the blockbuster memo by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.
The GOP memo, written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and released last week, clearly showed that Obama’s Justice Department and his hand-picked minions at the FBI abused a surveillance program in order to spy on President-elect Donald Trump. Democrats (and their minions in the MSM) went into overdrive to dispute the memo (not very effectively, by the way).
So, Democrats decided to put together their own memo, drafted by hyper partisan lawmaker Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). But they really didn’t care if the memo was released — in fact, they packed it with highly-classified information to make sure that it either wasn’t released or that it was heavily redacted. Their intent: Bash Trump and Republicans for lack of transparency.
Trump saw through their little reindeer games and nixed the whole thing.
Right on cue, the Democrats played their already-exposed card.
“Mr. President, what you call ‘political’ are actually called facts, 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,” Schiff said on Twitter.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who had no role whatsoever in the House memo, said: “The President’s double standard when it comes to transparency is appalling. The rationale for releasing the Nunes memo, transparency, vanishes when it could show information that’s harmful to him. Millions of Americans are asking one simple question: what is he hiding?”
But White House counsel Donald McGahn said late Friday that Trump could not release the Democratic memo because it contained “numerous properly classified and sensitive passages.” McGahn said to Nunes in a letter that the Justice Department had made the conclusion.
McGahn’s letter included another letter from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that identified “information for which national security or law enforcement concerns are especially significant.” The two expressed concerns about the memo’s release “in light of longstanding principles regarding the protection of intelligence sources and methods, ongoing investigations, and other similar sensitive information.”
Trump, meanwhile, said he would release the Democratic memo if classified and sensitive information was removed.
Nunes said in a statement that House Intelligence Committee Republicans “encourage the minority to accept the DOJ’s recommendations and make the appropriate technical changes and redactions so that no sources and methods are disclosed and their memo can be declassified as soon as possible.”
And Nunes said Democrats intentionally “packed their memo full of sources and methods” — sensitive information about how the House committee recruits sources and uncovers information.
So, Democrats have been outplayed by Trump — again. You’d think they’d get tired of so much losing, but apparently not.
[UPDATE: Trump is, no doubt, a big reader of The Daily Wire, and shortly after our story posted, the president helped out by posting this tweet:
Thanks, Mr. President!]