House Democrats are continuing their campaign to hold President Donald Trump and his allies accountable for their corruption. Now, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has issued a public demand for the Trump administration’s Director of National Intelligence to declassify reports covering the communications and case of Michael Flynn, a former top official in the Trump administration. Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his communications with the then-Russian Ambassador to the United States, but the Trump appointee-led Justice Department recently moved to drop the charges against Flynn. The material that Schiff is requesting would allow the public to see the actual facts of Flynn’s case, which have not changed.
.@MichaelJMorell nails the real scandal around unmasking. It's not what happened in the Obama admin, and barely even Trump's own lies, which we're sadly used to. It's that he has fully corrupted and politicized the intelligence community. https://t.co/0uIhwMcROE
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 17, 2020
Schiff shared on Twitter:
‘It’s clear the Administration is selectively declassifying information for purely political purposes, an abuse of the classification system. We need to ensure a transparent and complete public record free of political manipulation. It’s time to declassify any Flynn transcripts’
It’s clear the Administration is selectively declassifying information for purely political purposes, an abuse of the classification system.
We need to ensure a transparent and complete public record free of political manipulation.
It’s time to declassify any Flynn transcripts: pic.twitter.com/Uhfl166Fyh
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 22, 2020
Recently, the administration has declassified information like the list of now former officials who were part of the requests to “unmask” Flynn’s name from the transcripts of intercepted communications that he was a part of. Although allies of the president have tried to depict this unmasking of his previously concealed name as some kind of plot against the president, unmasking of identities in material like the transcripts in question is routine. Besides, how would the officials have even plotted against the president if they didn’t know that Flynn was talking to the interests in question until after the unmasking?
The scandal is not that Flynn was unmasked or prosecuted. It is that Barr is trying to drop charges to which he plead guilty and Grenell is releasing information about the unmasking requests. They are politicizing DOJ and the intel community to save Trump.https://t.co/3Hroe9gdqp
— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) May 15, 2020
None of these issues have stopped the president and his allies from running with the narrative that there’s some kind of secret plot against Trump that Democrats should be held accountable for. Trump has even come up with a nickname for the supposed scandal — “Obamagate.” He’s yet to actually fully even explain what specific crimes he’s alleging are a part of that scandal.
New: Senate Intel vice chair Mark Warner is asking Grenell to “declassify and make publicly available any intelligence report concerning conversations" between Flynn and Kislyak. Comes as calls intensify for release of Flynn-Kislyak transcripts. https://t.co/ANBqHG1VMl
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) May 20, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response to Schiff:
