Donald Trump started his day with an attack on Adam Schiff that accused him of being a liar without giving an example, of leaking classified information without presenting any evidence and derided him as “little”—a remark Trump surely made while wearing his footie PJs. Representative Schiff has since provided a response.
Schiff didn’t pause to produce a school-room nickname for Trump, or answer his baseless claims, because in a story full of juvenile tantrums, Adam Schiff is that rarest thing—an adult. As it turns out, there is one good reason why Trump needed to take a shot at Schiff today. Not for something he’s done, but for something that’s still coming.
As Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee backed away on Sunday from President Trump’s claim that a newly released memo vindicates him in the Russia investigation, Democrats pressed for the release of their own classified rebuttal, with a vote expected on Monday on whether to make it public.
Republicans spent weeks creating what they thought was a trap for the FBI, but since the incredibly underwhelming and self-defeating memo emerged, many of them have gnawed their own limbs off to get away from what’s turned out to be a massive bungle. Now Democrats are prepared to rub some salt into Trump’s self-inflicted wound with a memo that shows just how hard the combined staffs of Devin Nunes and the White House worked to distort the real evidence. And as an extra fun step, the guy who just spent a week talking about his belief in transparency, gets to decide whether the Democratic memo hits the streets.
The Democratic document, if the Intelligence Committee votes to release it, would be subject to the same review by the president. An official said on Sunday that the White House was open to releasing it pending an examination to protect intelligence sources and methods.
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Republicans have already voted once to bury the Democratic memo, and there’s every chance that they’ll do so again. Because what Republicans want most with this whole memo-related affair is that it be over, that the media stop talking about it, and that they get to go lick their wounds and scowl at Nunes.
Democrats would like to remind everyone not just how far Republicans were willing to go in this instance, but show that the l'affaire memo is just one example of the willingness of Trump and Trump’s defenders to lie, alter, and hide information from the public in their ongoing effort to demean the investigation. If Trump was innocent, it might seem that Republicans would be interested in getting as much information out as quickly as possible. But since it’s clear that Trump’s campaign had many contacts with Russian officials, that Trump has taken every possible action to obstruct the investigation, and that both Trump and members of his team had been highly dependent on money-laundering from Russian sources for years, the truth … will not set him free.
Trump sees clearly enough that his only chance in the Russian investigation, is to stop the Russian investigation. Whether that means taking shots at the FBI in general, or anyone in particular, he’s going to keep firing. Even if he regularly puts one through his own foot.
The Democratic memo shows that the FBI did present to the FISA court information on the provenance of the information from British agent Christopher Steele, and undermines Republican contentions that former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe indicated that the Steele information was vital to seeking surveillance against Trump adviser Carter Page.
With Trump having the final word, it seems unlikely that, no matter how the House votes on Monday, the Democratic memo will reach the public. Someone who was concerned about even keeping up the appearance of honesty would probably feel pressure to go through with the release. That someone would clearly not be Donald Trump.