Inquiring Minds: What Happened to the Memo Endangering National Security?

It’s been a wild ride these last few days. We’ve heard Democrats (among others) run the gambit on what the memo is. Depending on what day it was, it’s release was either a desperate nothing-burger or the most dangerous thing in human history.

But in the last two days before the release, they all seemed to settle on one narrative. Taking cues from the FBI’s press release, it was shouted from the rooftops that releasing the memo was dangerous to the country’s security.

Nancy Pelosi bemoaned that releasing the memo was a “total disregard for national security.” Corey Booker turned it up a notch and said this:

“Well, obstructive, I might say tantamount to treasonous in the sense of: when you violate the intelligence community’s mandates around classified documentation and what should be released, you could be betraying or, especially if you’re revealing sources and methods or giving some color to sources and methods, you are actually endangering fellow Americans in the intelligence community and our ability to source intelligence,” Mr. Booker replied, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Someone apparently needs a lesson on what the definition of treason is, but I digress.

Adam Schiff of course weighed in:

“As I said to my committee colleagues during this hearing, sadly, we can fully expect that the president of the United States will not put the national interest over his own personal interest. But, it is a sad day, indeed, when that is also true of our own committee. Because today, this committee voted to put the president’s personal interest, perhaps their own political interest, above the national interest, in denying themselves even the ability to hear from the department and the FBI.

The national interest, you guys!

But did you notice something after the memo got released today?

There was in fact nothing in the memo that could be construed as endangering national security. No sources or methods are exposed. The FBI/DOJ aren’t headed for destruction due to it’s supposed slanderous tales. Despite the dire warnings of Armageddon, dogs still bark, cats still purr, and Adam Schiff’s eye’s still bug out in a really weird way.

Johnathan Turley wondered the same thing about the Democrat claims leading up to the release:

However, my greatest concern is what is not in the dossier: classified information “jeopardizing national security.” Leaders like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared that the committee had moved beyond “dangerous irresponsibility and disregard for our national security” and “disregarded the warnings of the Justice Department and the FBI.”

Now we can read the memo. There is a sharp and alarming disconnect between the descriptions of Pelosi and the House Intelligence Committee’s Ranking Minority Member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the actual document. It clearly does not contain information that would reveal sources or methods.

There’s a word for what Democrats did here.

It’s called lying.

In an attempt to hide information from the public, they completely misrepresented what was in the memo. This is blatant misuse of the leeway Americans give our leaders while expecting them not to abuse and hide behind process in the face of being transparent whenever possible. Their desperate attempt to distract and misapply security concerns only serves to further erode trust in our institutions.

Why? Because if Democrats were willing to lie about the contents of this memo and falsely proclaim it a threat, you’re left to wonder what else they are hiding with false claims of “protecting national security.” That applies to the FBI as well. The FBI and DOJ should not be hiding behind false pretenses in order to obscure information from the public.

Turley continues in his op-ed:

There are indeed two narratives competing in this controversy, one involving improper political influences in the FBI, and another of improper political pressure from the White House. Both could well be true but it is bizarre to suggest that only one of those allegations should be investigated. The FBI and the intelligence agencies have a long and documented history of such abuse. This includes the targeting of political leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. As I discussed earlier, Subsection 11(g) of Rule X was created to allow members of Congress to vote to release classified information when the majority determines “that the public interest would be served by such disclosure.”

This serves the public interest, as would a response from the Democrats and the FBI. Regardless of what comes out of the merits of the Russian investigation, Congress should investigate the misuse of classified proceedings in both the securing of the FISA applications and the later effort to prevent the release of this memo.

Indeed.

Classified designations exist for a reason and have a proper place. They don’t exist for unelected bureaucracies and partisan congressional members to hide information that otherwise should be shared with the public.

While it’s certainly in vogue to attack Rep. Nunes, at least he released the information to the public via the proper channels and in hindsight nothing he released had any business being hidden from the public.

There’s a distinct hypocrisy in the news media and Democrats decrying the “unprecedented” release of a legally declassified memo, all the while they’ve been leaking classified material like a sieve for well over a year. That includes Adam Schiff’s office, which has shown all the discreetness of a break dancing elephant in how they’ve treated classified leaks.

I’ll leave you with this question. If Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest were willing to lie about the memo to hide it from you, what does that say about the truthfulness of their objections to the memo itself?

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