Donald Trump spoke out of one side of his mouth prior to the State of the Union Address about the one-sided, inaccurate, and incomplete memo the Republican House Intelligence Committee chair prepared. The president said the biased memo would be thoroughly considered. Then, as he walked down the aisle, leaving the podium, the president was caught on a hot mike. As a result, the FBI released a rare public statement.
Basically, Trump said that releasing the memo was a done deal. He told Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC):
‘Oh yeah, oh, don’t worry. 100 percent.’
FBI Director Christopher Wray initially went to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to quash the Nunes memo and prevent the leaking of classified material in an active investigation. House Intelligence Committee chair, Devin Nunes (R-CA) prepared the memo using extremely confidential, cherry-picked intelligence from the FBI.
When Ryan sided with Nunes, the two men went to the White House to plead their case, but as Trump said on the open mike, they failed. As a result, the FBI released its statement to the media and the public about their concerns.
The House Intelligence Committee voted along strict party lines to release the memo. After that, ranking member Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that the Democrats had prepared their own memo to balance out the Republican’s biased memo. However, Nunes refused to release it.
Unlike the Republicans, the minority party will vet the sensitive material with the FBI.
Nunes’ staff may have worked with the White House to concoct the memo. Many believe that its purpose is to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. The ill-conceived Nunes memo could hurt the credibility of the FBI, which is investigating Trump.
Trump has been critical of nearly everyone except Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Plus, the president has done everything he can to shut down Mueller’s investigation.
The FBI’s statement questioned the accuracy of the Nunes memo, according to The Washington Post:
‘As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about the material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.’
The FBI defended the use of the FISA Court, the Washington Post reported:
‘The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI. We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.’
Before the address, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president has not “seen or been briefed” on the memo:
‘There are no current plans to release the House Intelligence Committee’s memo…There’s always a chance (the memo won’t be released.) No one here is going to make a decision that jeopardizes national security.’
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told Fox News radio the next day:
‘(The memo will) be released here pretty quick, (after White House’s national security lawyers complete) slicing and dicing and looking at it so that we know what it means.’
That meant the White House will not put the Nunes memo through a formal vetting process after all.
Featured Image via Getty Images/Mark Wilson.
