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SCHIFF COY ON TRANSCRIPTS RELEASE: Now that Intelligence Community chief Richard Grenell has given the OK to release 53 transcripts from the House Intelligence Committee Trump-Russia investigation, the question is: Will chairman Adam Schiff actually make them public? At the moment, he sounds like a man stalling for time.
Schiff is now suggesting Grenell’s work might not be trustworthy enough to merit quick release. “We are now reviewing the proposed redactions from ODNI [Director of National Intelligence] based on classification, law enforcement sensitivity or items ODNI requests be for official use only,” Schiff said in a statement. “Given the overtly political role now played by the acting DNI (Grenell), including the leak of his letter, this committee and the public can have little confidence that his determinations are made on the merits.” Schiff said the committee will review Grenell’s decision, a review that will be “as expeditious as possible given the constraints of the pandemic.” The chairman said he looks forward to release — but pointedly gave no hint of when that might be.
That’s not good enough for Republicans. “Schiff himself voted to release these transcripts and claims he wants them out,” Intel Committee ranking member Devin Nunes said Wednesday. “There’s no reason he can’t publish them all today — except that he really doesn’t want the American people to see how little evidence there ever was for the Russian collusion hoax he advocated and continues to advocate.”
That’s the key. Republicans believe the transcripts will undermine any remaining fragments of belief in Trump-Russia collusion — and show that Democrats were acting in bad faith when they pushed the collusion narrative. They say that is why Schiff is dragging his feet — which they don’t expect to change any time soon.
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FOR SOME REASON, THERE’S EVEN MORE TRUMP-RUSSIA NEWS. On Wednesday the Justice Department decided to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s original assignment, known as the “scope memo.” In the August 2, 2017 document, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein directed Mueller to investigate whether Carter Page, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos “committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials.” No big surprises there, and, of course, Mueller never found any such thing. But for those who suspected that the Justice Department used the never-successfully prosecuted 1799 law known as the Logan Act as a pretext to go after Michael Flynn, the memo appears to confirm their worse fears.
FINALLY, A SENATE TRUMP-RUSSIA REPORT UPDATE: A spokeswoman for the Senate Intelligence Committee notes that its recent report mentioned in Monday’s Daily Memo is not, in fact, the “grand finale” of the committee’s Trump-Russia investigation. It was just Volume Four. There will be a Volume Five coming at some date in the future, and it will include the committee’s views on the now-settled non-existence of collusion.
ONE LAST THING: ZOOM GOES MCCARTHY. Bowing to the new realities of the coronavirus crisis, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will hold his first news conference today via Zoom. Yes, some reporters will still be in the Capitol studio, but McCarthy decided — like Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently but unlike the White House — to allow reporters to take part remotely.
