It will be difficult for the White House if President Donald Trump does not agree to release a Democratic rebuttal to Rep. Devin Nunes' memo about alleged FBI surveillance abuses, Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday, but he is even more worried that there will be "political redactions" made to the document to protect the president.
"I think that's going to be very hard for the White House," the California Democrat told CNN's "New Day" program. "They've tried to make the case that they released the Nunes memo in the interest of transparency."
Schiff said he is even more concerned that the White House would make political redactions, not redactions to protect source or methods, to the memo, to take out information they think does not favor the president.
If that happens, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee can try to force a vote in the House, or they can seek a declassification review through the FBI or the Department of Justice, but that would take time, Schiff said.
"There aren't a lot of options, but it will certainly appear that the White House is trying to stonewall again if, in fact, they make these political redactions that we fear," said Schiff.
Meanwhile, Schiff denied one of the central facets of the GOP memo, which claimed that outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified to the Intelligence Committee that a dossier funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign was crucial to a spy warrant approved against former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
"That's not exactly what McCabe said," said Schiff. "While I can't go into the details of what he said, essentially his argument is we look at this as a complete whole. All parts of the application are important. . . the broader point was that the only parts of the dossier that were important were those that pertained to Carter Page."
He also said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court did not see the parts of the dossier that did not involve Page, meaning they did not see the salacious details in it about Trump.
Schiff also denied contentions in the GOP document that the FISA court was not told about the dossier's backers.
"I think the FISA court was made well aware of the potential political bias for those who supported Christopher Steele's work," said Schiff. "There was at that time only one other candidate in the race."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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