WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Saturday accused the Democrats of playing politics with classified information, asserting that their memo countering GOP allegations about the conduct of the FBI’s Russia probe was a trap meant to “blame the White House for lack of transparency.”
Citing national security concerns, the White House notified the House Intelligence Committee on Friday that the president was “unable” to declassify the Democratic memo. White House counsel Don McGahn said in a letter to the committee that the memo contains “numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages” and asked the committee to revise it with the help of the Justice Department.
He said Trump was still “inclined” to release the memo in the interest of transparency if revisions are made.
Trump weighed in with a tweet on Saturday.
“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,” he tweeted. The meaning of the “(and more)” was not immediately clear.
Trump urged the Democrats to “re-do and send back in proper form!”
The president’s rejection of the Democratic memo was in contrast to his enthusiastic embrace of releasing the Republican document, which accuses the FBI and Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers in obtaining a secret warrant to monitor former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
Even before reading the GOP document, Trump pledged to make it public and was overheard telling one congressman after the State of the Union address that he would “100 percent” put it out. It was published in full a week ago over the objections of the Justice Department.
The Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, California Rep. Adam Schiff, criticized Trump for treating the two documents differently, saying the president is now seeking revisions by the same committee that produced the original Republican memo. Still, Schiff said, Democrats “look forward to conferring with the agencies to determine how we can properly inform the American people about the misleading attack on law enforcement by the GOP.”
He responded to Trump’s tweet Saturday with one of his own, writing “Mr. President, what you call “political” are actually called facts, and your concern for sources and methods would be more convincing if you hadn’t decided to release the GOP memo (“100%”) before reading it and over the objections of the FBI.”
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the move is “part of a dangerous and desperate pattern of cover-up on the part of the president.” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has read the classified information both memos are based on. She tweeted that Trump’s blocking the memo is “hypocrisy at its worst.”
The head of the House committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who produced the GOP memo, encouraged Democrats to accept the Justice Department’s recommendations and “make the appropriate technical changes and redactions.”
Trump has said the GOP memo “vindicates” him in the ongoing Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. But Democrats and Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who helped draft the GOP memo, have said it shouldn’t be used to undermine the special counsel.
The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to release the Democratic memo. Republicans backed the release, but several said they thought it should be redacted. Ryan also said he thought the Democratic document should be released.
In declining to declassify the document, the White House also sent lawmakers a letter signed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, as well as a marked-up copy of the memo, laying out portions it considers too sensitive to make public.
