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The Memo & the Shutdown – Between a Rock & a Hard Place

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The House Memo has now been read by at least 140 House Representatives – including one Democrat.

65 Republicans have signed a letter asking House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes to release the Memo publicly.

You can find the text and all signatories to the letter here.

Democrats desperately do not want this Memo to be made public.

Every single Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee voted against allowing other Congressional members from even seeing the Memo. They were overridden by a Republican majority.

Democrats – with one lone exception – have refused to even read the Memo. Avoid anything that might compromise their narrative…

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter what Dems want.

Nunes will put release of the Memo up for a House Committee vote. Nunes will then send the Memo to President Trump for statutory release approval. The Memo will be approved – and will be released directly in front of President Trump’s State of the Union speech, scheduled for January 30, 2018.

Congressional officials expect the classified memo to be made available to the public before the end of the month. In order to make the classified memo public, the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by California Republican Devin Nunes, must first have another vote, a congressional source stated.

The vote is expected to happen and then the classified memo will be given to “POTUS for five days” so he can review it, the source stated. If POTUS objects to releasing the memo it will then go to the full House for a vote, they added.

President Trump is expected to approve the release of the memo.

Democrats have attacked the Memo in an attempt to undermine its legitimacy.

Adam Schiff:

Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI. This may help carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals.

Representative Eric Swalwell had this literary gem of a response:

But these attacks will prove a failing strategy. For this reason:

Both Schiff and Swalwell are almost certainly at personal risk from the Memo’s release. Remember that Special Leak Taskforce….

Congressional reactions and a sense of the Memo’s scope is covered here:

You wouldn’t know it from MSM but public interest in the Memo is…significant.

For over a day #ReleaseTheMemo was the number one trending topic on Twitter – worldwide.

It’s probably still near the top but Twitter has done its part to minimize the impact. #ReleaseTheMemo no longer shows as a top trend despite appearing in approximately 20-25% of the tweets I’m seeing currently.

Yesterday, when I typed #ReleaseTheMemo in search, Twitter showed me everything, anything, other than that hashtag as an option – including #ReleaseTheDogs and #ReleaseTheHounds. Its working again today – I guess Twitter feels a bit more relaxed with the Government Shutdown going on.

Democrats are happy too. Nothing like a good government shutdown to distract prying eyes.

But this isn’t really an optimal solution for the Left.

Nancy Pelosi, proving that math is hard, provided this take:

It takes 60 votes. The Republicans don’t have that many.

Even the New York Times took note:

A CNN Poll found that 56% of Americans say approving a budget agreement to avoid a shutdown is more important than continuing the DACA program. Just 34% chose DACA over a shutdown.

I understand the argument that by mid-term elections all focus will be on Trump – but I’m not sure that some will forget so easily. Republicans are already targeting their Democratic opponents.

Lou Barletta:

The decision to shut down the government and deny Pennsylvania children the longest extension of CHIP funding is an astonishing neglect of duty by the Senate Democrats. They want Congress to provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants – with zero enforcement measures mind you – in order to obtain a vote to keep the government open, which includes providing critical funds for our military, and providing long-term certainty for America’s children. There are over 300,000 children in Pennsylvania enrolled in CHIP. Voting in support of reckless illegal immigration, while putting American children and military at the back of the line is clearly a foolish manufactured crisis.

There’s even a website – schumershutdown.

There’s one other thing:

Consider what really happened:

But those add-ons:

There are some notable differences between Obama’s shutdown and this one:

President Trump provided his own take:

He just might get them. A recent poll by from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal highlighted the effects from a strong economy:

The Democratic advantage on the generic ballot is down to six points, compared to 11 points last month.

The positive effects from a continuously improving economy are only going to grow.

President Trump, along with most Republicans, feels pretty comfortable about where blame for the shutdown falls.

Meanwhile, that Memo will come out. Despite the best efforts of Democrats. And it will be bad – really bad – for the Left.

Watch this video with Jim Jordan and Martha MacCallum regarding the House Memo. Note the focus on Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Evelyn Farkas, at the 3:00 mark:

I wrote about Farkas’ comments back in early April:

The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence.

Note that Farkas said “how we knew” not “what we knew”. A crucial distinction. The fact that she had left the Obama Administration to work on Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign only makes her comments more interesting.

If Democrats chose to denigrate the House Memo – which they will – it may prove the impetus to release the underlying documents.

The Inspector General is already releasing them to Bob Goodlatte and the House Judiciary Committee.

 

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