Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have drafted their own “counter-memo” to respond to the four-page memo created by GOP staffers and made available for House members to review.
The GOP memo – which Republican lawmakers are pushing to make public, has been described as containing bombshell revelations of extensive abuse of the FISA surveillance court in a conspiracy involving the Obama administration, the DOJ, the FBI and the Clinton campaign.
In an effort to counter the GOP memo’s imminent release, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced that Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee would release their 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 decidated professionals at the FBI and DOJ.”
Schiff will move to make the “counter-memo” available to the full house.
.@RepAdamSchiff announces House Intel Dems have written their own counter-memo; will seek to make public, too. pic.twitter.com/0pK3xulL8u
— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 24, 2018
At the end of the day, however, if the GOP memo reveals that the FBI applied for a FISA surveillance warrant or otherwise used an unverified “Trump-Russia dossier” created by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, or that the extent of the Obama administration’s “unmasking” of Trump officials was much more invasive than previously understood, it’s hard to imagine how Schiff’s “counter-memo” is going to be able to explain all of it away.
This latest act of desperation as the noose tightens comes on the heels of an absurd letter written by Adam Schiff and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to Facebook and Twitter executives, calling for the Social Media giants to combat “Russian bots” which were promoting the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo.
NEW: Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Schiff urge Facebook and Twitter to investigate involvement of Russian bots in pushing “Release the Memo” campaign: “If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors.” pic.twitter.com/SkAci5NefK
— ABC News (@ABC) January 23, 2018
Unfortunately for Schiff and Feinstein’s straw-grabbing, the Daily Beast reported that internal Twitter sources confirm that the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag has been pushed by actual Americans.
a knowledgeable source says that Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.
In short, according to this source, who would not speak to The Daily Beast for attribution, the retweets are coming from inside the country.
Schiff and the Democrats are apparently so riled up by the GOP memo that now they’re telling people that the American public shouldn’t be allowed to see the document because we’re too stupid to understand its contents. In an interview with CNN, Schiff said the following:
CABRERA: “Why not allow peel to look at it and let Americans make the decision for themselves about whether it’s useful information or not?”
SCHIFF: “Well, because the American people unfortunately don’t have the underlying materials and therefore they can’t see how distorted and misleading this document is. The Republicans are not saying make the underlying materials available to the public. They just want to make this spin available to the public. I think that spin, which is a attack on the FBI, is just designed to attack the FBI and Bob Mueller to circle the wagons for the White House. And that’s a terrible disservice to the people, hard working people at the bureau, but more than that, it’s a disservice to the country.”
So – Congressional Democrats have crafted a “counter-memo” to combat the GOP memo, Russian bots are pushing for the GOP memo’s release (along with over 60 Congressional Republicans), and the American public is too stupid to understand it.
We are undoubtedly witnessing the Schiff hitting the fan.
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