A top White House official signaled on Wednesday that more declassified documentation related to the Russia investigation will soon be released to the public with less than a month until the election.
Less than 24 hours after President Trump announced that he authorized the declassification of all documents pertaining to the investigation and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said in an interview with Fox & Friends that there will “hopefully be more documents in the coming days.” The top aide to the president also discussed documents declassified Tuesday afternoon, which included handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan about briefing former President Barack Obama in 2016 on an unverified Russian intelligence report about Clinton approving a plan to tie Trump to Russia.
“When you see Brennan’s notes and one of the things that he puts in there is to ‘vilify Donald Trump.‘ I mean, when you look at a coordinated effort, and now you see it in his own handwriting, why is this just now coming out to the American people?” Meadows said. He also criticized former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation for apparently failing to identify the documents.
“There are more documents to come,” he said. “The president wants transparency on all of this, and hopefully, we’ll see documents in the coming days.”
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked why Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence from March 2017 to August 2019, did not release the documents for “two or three years.” Meadows only responded that Coats “did not allow these documents to come out.”
While Trump recovered from his coronavirus diagnosis at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center over the weekend, Meadows said that the president “tasked” him to have the documents related to the Russia inquiry declassified and released to the public.
âObviously, this is an important day as the president continues to improve and is ready to get back to a normal work schedule. Heâs already this morning â weâve had a couple of discussions on items that he wants to get done,” Meadows said on Monday. “Candidly, heâs already tasked me with getting some declassification rolling in a follow-up to some of the requests that [Rep.] Devin Nunes and others have made.â
