Congressional Democrats are hoping that President Trump will allow for the release of the Democratic counter to the recently release Republican intelligence memo that cast a dark cloud over the FBI and Department of Justice.
The GOP memo brought into question the two government agencies surveillance practices when they considered a former Trump for President advisor.
With the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to allow the Democratic Party memo to be release, Ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told The Floridian that he believes the president will “be force to” to release the memo, but is concerned that the Trump Administration will ‘delete information” that could hurt Republicans politically.
“After all, the White House has been arguing that they’re in favor of transparency. Now, you never rule anything out with this administration, they’re more than capable of justifying the most obvious inconsistencies,” said Schiff, adding that his “greater concern is that they make political redactions to try to delete information they think is harmful to them politically.”
Schiff also said that he “asked the FBI and Department of Justice to vet” the Democratic memo, and to see if the White House was making any “unnecessary edits.”
Schiff has asked the two government agencies whose surveillance practices are in question to “vet” a memo that could exonerate them, or at the very least, put them in a better light.
“We’ve asked the FBI and the Department of Justice to vet our memo, that’s a practice Republicans refuse to use, and I am confident we’ll get a good sense from the FBI and the Department of Justice as whether the White House is imposing any additional, unnecessary edits.”- Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
When asked why he doesn’t just move to declassify the entire FISA application, Schiff said that because the application reveals “a lot of sources and methods,” it “would need a lot more vetting.”
Florida Democratic freshman Congressman Al Lawson (pictured) also told us that he hopes President Trump will release his political party’s memo because he believes that the process “can’t go wrong when you let the American people make a decision.”
"I hope that he releases it and let the American people decide. We are dealing with a president that is different than any other president that has really served and really doesn’t have the background, participating in government. People are expecting different things from him. You can’t go wrong when you let the American people make a decision, we certainly hope that will happen.”- Rep. Al Lawson (D-FL)
Trump will most likely release the memo, but will he prove Schiff right and redact information simply for political gain?
