Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released the following statement:
“Last week, House Intelligence Committee Republicans voted to release to all Members of the House a highly misleading ‘memo’ attacking the conduct of the Russia investigation by the FBI and the DOJ. Like its other attacks on those agencies, this represents another effort to distract from the Russia probe and undermine the Special Counsel. With this latest gambit, however, the Majority seeks to selectively and misleadingly characterize classified information in an effort to protect the President at any cost.
“Regrettably, it has been necessary for Committee Democrats to draft our own memorandum, setting out the relevant facts and exposing the misleading character of the Republicans’ document so that members of the House are not left with an erroneous impression of the dedicated professionals at the FBI and DOJ. On Monday, at our normally scheduled Committee meeting, we will move that this new memorandum be made available to the full House in our classified spaces.
“It now appears that the GOP intends to seek further dissemination of this classified information, this time to the public. Yesterday, a member of the Freedom Caucus admitted discussing the Republican spin memo with the President and indicated that he was sure the President would approve its release to the public because ‘it is so favorable’ for him. If this becomes the new standard for the declassification of information revealing sources and methods, this Administration and Majority will have reached a dangerous new low, trading our national security interests for political benefit.
“The Russians, who are pushing the campaign to declassify this information through its social media bots and trolls, will no doubt be thrilled. We would strongly urge against this course, but would have to insist that our memorandum be likewise made public so that the entire nation is not then misled.”
