Democratic Memo Released: Now That It Has Been, House Intelligence Committee Should Stop Releasing Any More Memos and Return to the Shadows Where They Belong

First it was the Nunes memo, now it’s the Democratic “rebuttal” memo.

Now it should be….nothing.  No more releases of classified memos for the purpose of furthering a political agenda, no more releases of ANY classified information.  Instead of providing clarity, both memos served to muddy the waters even more.

On the Democratic rebuttal memo, they overloaded their memo with fluff, or unneeded sentences that restate the point that they’ve already made in earlier parts of the memo.   It’s made the memo nearly unreadable.  

The Republicans have pointed out on page 5 that the Democrats finally admitted that they didn’t tell the court everything explicitly when the Obama DOJ filed the original FISA request against Trump advisor Page.   Instead, they dropped hints an then assumed that the court would be able to connect the dots.  Sorry, but that’s not how the FISA court works.   Everything needs to be out in the open for the judges to consider, without needing to connect any dots.   We have elementary kids connect the dots, not FISA court judges.

The Democrats have pointed out that they’ve successfully countered the Republican arguments in the Nunes memo.   I’m not sure they have; they’ve certainly muddied the waters but not much else.   There was nothing new or spectacular and was a let-down.

I also didn’t like the fact that the Democratic memo wasn’t numerated, and didn’t appear to be in any kind of chronological order.   I think it follows the pattern that the Nunes memo followed, but the GOP memo was much easier to read. 

I think the lesson here is that whoever releases a memo first, has the bigger splash.   Hopefully there will be no further memos on this subject.