President Donald Trump accused Democrats of deliberately producing a memo relating to the Russia investigation that they knew could not be released publicly.
The president in a tweet Saturday morning referred to a memo by Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee that responds to a document by Republican committee staff accusing the FBI and Department of Justice of bias and improperly seeking surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Although Trump declassified the prior four-page memo by Republicans, which was then released publicly, the White House indicated Friday that he won’t at this time declassify the 10-page document by Democrats due to national security concerns.
The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency. Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!
Trump’s comments echoed those of congressional Republicans accusing Democrats of playing politics with their rebuttal:
“This was written to be redacted,” Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, a member of the committee, told ABC News of the Democratic memo. ”It’s much longer, it reveals all sorts of things that we know can’t be revealed:”
