Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., predicted Tuesday that President Trump would not release a classified Democratic memo that rebuts GOP assertions about surveillance abuses without making some “noise” about it.
“I’ve never seen this president participate in an effort that did anything other than make him look good,” said Himes, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.
“I guess I would bet against the White House saying what it said with the Republican memo, which was, 100 percent, it’s going out,” he said. “I think we’re going to see some noise, I think we’re going to see some obstacles.”
Will Trump declassify the Democrats’ rebuttal to the GOP memo?
“I’ve never seen this President participate in an effort that did anything other than make him look good,” says Rep. Jim Himes. pic.twitter.com/IRvYhtPBlY
— New Day (@NewDay) February 6, 2018
Himes said Trump would see the Democratic memo as bad news for him personally, since it tries to rebut the GOP memo released last week.
When Trump released the GOP memo, the White House released a statement saying it “raises serious concerns” about some of the decisions made in the Obama administration to surveil a former Trump staffer.
A key finding in the GOP memo was that the Obama administration relied solely on a Trump dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign to seek a FISA warrant to spy on a former Trump staffer, Carter Page.
But Democrats have said their memo will refute that, and show the FISA court had some knowledge that the dossier was a product of Trump’s political opponents.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., seemed to hint at this on Monday, when he indicated that some “footnote” describing the origin of the dossier might have been submitted to the court.
At the same time, Nunes said that small bit of information was not enough.
“A footnote saying that something might be political is a far cry from letting the American people know that the Democrats in the Hillary campaign paid for dirt that the FBI then used to get a warrant on an American citizen to spy on another campaign,” Nunes said Monday.
The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to release the Democratic memo, which gives Trump five days to decide whether to how to release it, which could include some demands for redactions. Last week, the same process played out for the Republican memo, which Trump released with no redactions.
