Rep. Devin Nunes wants the public to see the Democrats’ “ridiculous” rebuttal memo on possible FBI misconduct in the Russia probe.
In an interview on Fox News Channel on Sunday, Mr. Nunes, California Republican and House intelligence committee chairman, accused the Democrats of playing political games by trying to make an issue of President Trump’s demanding redactions for national-security purposes.
Mr. Nunes, the author of a memo making the initial charges against the FBI said the panel’s Democrats should be, but aren’t, spending the weekend “redacting it so that we can get it back to the White House so the president can declassify it.”
And then bring it, he said.
“We actually want the Democratic memo out. We think it’s ridiculous on the face of it,” he said.
He went on to ridicule what he characterized as the contents of the Democrats’ rebuttal memo.
“We think it’s very political how about they attack myself, they attack Chairman [Trey] Gowdy, they turn Carter Page into some super-secret Russian spy, they talk about how Christopher Steele is a really, really good source when we know that he lied to the FBI,” Mr. Nunes said.
Both the White House counsel and President Trump have said they are inclined to release the memo if it can be cleansed of information that compromises national security, with the president personally accusing them of inserting that material, knowing it’d create a classification matter that would look bad for the Republicans and good for them.
“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!” he tweeted Saturday.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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