After the House Intelligence Committee voted to release the four-page Nunes memo summarizing the abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the course of the 2016 presidential election, ranking minority member Adam Schiff rushed to the microphones to disparage the release of the memo on various grounds. Bret Baier cut to Schiff’s press conference live during Special Report last night. I thought Schiff must be downplaying and omitting the relevant facts. He is a smug liar with the most punchable face in the United States.
Lee Zeldin is a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee. He voted to release the Nunes memo and then took to the floor of the House in response to Schiff last night. He also issued the following written statement that is posted here:
In the interest of transparency, the American people must have access to this [four-page Nunes] FISA abuse memo immediately, and I applaud my colleagues on the House Intel committee for their commitment to shedding light on the gross FISA abuse detailed in this memo. Releasing this classified information will not compromise good sources and methods. It will, however, reveal the feds’ reliance on bad sources and methods. President Trump should immediately sign off on the release of this memo to the American public.
With regards to the House Democrats’ call for a vote to publicly release immediately an alleged new memo by Rep. Adam Schiff, it is crucial to note that the House Democrats did not offer the majority members of the Committee any opportunity whatsoever to review this memo prior to tonight’s vote for its immediate declassification and release. I, for one, (1) haven’t seen the Schiff memo; (2) have no idea what it says; (3) am not aware of it being made available to anyone in the House before now; and ([4]) can’t confirm it even actually exists yet. The opposite is true for the FISA abuse memo that was made available to House members the week before last.
The video below gives Rep. Zeldin’s statement as delivered on the floor of the House. Byron York gives a slightly different account in his tale of two memos.
It appears that the House Intelligence Committee in fact voted to initiate the same process to release the Schiff memo as it followed on the Nunes memo. Byron posted the following on Twitter:
Just for record: @RepAdamSchiff did say at top of newser that Intel committee voted to make Dem memo available to all of House. Apparently not everyone heard that, and Schiff later spoke as if GOP had voted to keep Dem memo under wraps. So some confusion. pic.twitter.com/8cXjAWNN2s
— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 30, 2018
When Schiff says “memoranda,” incidentally, I believe he means “memorandum.”
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