The FISA Follies: " War of the Memos " Edition

As I was preparing for a Demand Progress-sponsoredpanel on Congressional oversight of intelligence matters on the afternoon of February 9, Demand Progress Policy Director Daniel Schuman and I agreed that if President Trump was going to refuse to “declassify” the House Intelligence Committee Democrats rebuttal to the “Nunes Memo,” he would wait until the late Friday news cycle to do it. We didn’t have to wait long for that prediction to cometrue.  In a moment,  I’ll get to the issue of whether Trump actually has the authority under the Constitution to do what he did, but I want to start with is this paragraph from theNew York Times story referenced above:But Donald F. McGahn II, the president ’s lawyer, said in a letter to the committee on Friday night that the Democratic memo could not be released because it “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.” He said the president would again consider making the memo public if the committee, which had approv ed its release on Monday, revised it to “mitigate the risks.”In that sameNYT story, House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff provided further context:In a statement on Friday night, Mr. Schiff said that Democrats had provided their memo to the F.B.I. and the Justice Department for vetting before it was approved for release by the committee. The Democratic memo was drawn from the same underlying documents as the Republican one.“We will be reviewing the recomme...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs