The news is out by now. President Trump has refused to release the Democratic memo concerning the ongoing investigation. The same person who claims to now be so concerned about information security was the same person who promised on the House floor to release the Republican memo quickly before he had even seen it. Since there is both video and sound of that, I hope no reader will try to claim that this is fake news.
This is a dangerous precedent, in that normally both a majority and a minority report are allowed and are released at the same time. That was pointed out last week when the Republican memo was released. But now, it is becoming clear that the Republican majority has no intention of allowing politically damaging material to be released by the minority party. At least, we assume it is politically damaging material, which is itself an argument from silence. I dislike arguments from silence. Arguments from silence are how conspiracy theories get started. After all, “absence of proof is not proof of absence,” which is what conspiracy theorists rely on.
Nevertheless, this is a situation that begs the argument from silence. Refusal to release any opposing viewpoint while releasing a viewpoint from your party, which the security services have been asking you not to release, points to a conspiracy. I say again, this is a dangerous precedent.
I fully expect that Republican minions–and I do now fully mean minions–will step out in force to explain how the Democrats were about to violate our holy security. There will be explanations about a memo that we are not allowed to read which will state that though no one has seen it, the memo must have truly put our country in danger. We will be told about how the Democrats are being security-foolish and unpatriotic. But, the bottom line is that a suppression of the view of another party, under the guise of operational security, has taken place.
I suspect that at some time, some type of diluted memo might be allowed out. But, by then, Republican forces may have taken action against the FBI and other investigative agencies in order to quash a legitimate investigation which they have tried to tarnish with information provided only by them.
Normally, I try to be somewhat moderate. Not this time. This time, I am in full resistance mode. This time there is no moderate stance to take. It is my fervent hope that the Democratic minority in Congress will engage and go to the Supreme Court. There are three branches of government. It is time for the third one to speak loudly.
I also think this is careless and biased on the part of the W.H. But my concern doesn’t stop there. There are problems revealed by the Nunes memo – and these need to be vigorously investigated and exposed. For example, the problem of the FISA court, and the fact – for example – that the corroborating evidence for the Steele Dossier was in fact information leaked to a reporter by Steele, whose integrity was shot when he lied to the FBI about his leaks to same reporter. Whatever mess we accept is a precedent that becomes entrenched and thus can be used against other people. In short, we shouldn’t be thinking just about this WH and Trump. This should be a non-partisan issue. The bigger problem is that partisanship is destroying our democracy.
I agree that partisanship is destroying our democracy. There is one point I would like to make. Almost by definition, law enforcement must collect information from miscreants. The fact that information was received from a miscreant is NORMAL in law enforcement. Confidential Informants, miscreants who make deals, potential accomplices, these are the people with whom law enforcement regularly works in order to put a case together. Thus, to argue that a memo that was not back then known to be false was used as part, and only part, of the justification for a warrant is neither unusual nor suspicious.
Orthocuban it’s not that Steele was a miscreant; the problem was that the corroborating information was not a corroboration (as required for the FISA finding), it was one source. The FISA court is a secret court, with no separate oversight. Ie, the court failed to meet its standard and the error wasn’t caught. Thus, on the matter of civil liberties this was a DOUBLE fail (secret with no third party oversight AND no corroberating source). That it happened to the Trump administration is not my concern; that it could happen to anyone is. It is a poor standard to entrench.
re: ‘not unusual or suspicious’ – this is part of the problem. I’ve watched the right cheer when abrogations of civil liberties happen to the left, and the left cheer when the same happens to the right. This is dangerous — both sides should be more interested in the core issue of *standards*, *civil liberties*, and *justice* instead of cheering when their opponent gets toasted without consideration for these central issues.
You have an extremely good point. The problem is that because we do not have the Democratic memo, we do not know whether that was true, or whether the FISA application we read was only a follow-on addendum to an earlier approved warrant. It appears that some leaks paint it that way. It is the failure to be honest that hits hard.
Orthocuban and I agree – the Democratic memo should be released (or leaked – I’m all for transparency). But given the extreme partisanship, and the Democrats silence on the very real war on whistleblowers and journalists under the last administration, I’m not sure I really trust either party on these matters.