disobedientmedia | However, as the Wall Street Journal
reports, it is important to remember that the FBI knows and has known
what is in the memo for a long time, as the Bureau had, “refused to
provide access to those documents until director Christopher Wray and
the Justice Department faced a contempt of Congress vote.”
The Journal further relates
that: “The FBI’s public statement appears to be an act of
insubordination after Mr. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein tried and failed to get the White House to block the memo’s
release. Their public protest appears intended to tarnish in advance
whatever information the memo contains. The public is getting to see
amid this brawl how the FBI plays politics, and it isn’t a good look.”
Members of the Democratic Party have also expressed their opposition to the release of the memo.
For example, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep.
Adam Schiff (D-CA), has also come out against the release of the memo
to the public. Last week, Schiff and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), wrote a
letter to Facebook and Twitter, in which they expressed their fears
that the top trending hashtag “#ReleaseTheMemo” was being pushed by
Russian bots as part of a propaganda effort seeking to “attack our
democracy”.
However, much to their dismay, it was revealed
that the top trending hashtag was not the work of Russian bots, but
originated organically by fellow Americans. This news did not deter a
California duo from penning a second letter
to Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday, in order to raise awareness about
potential abuse of their platforms by “agents of foreign influence”.
Like Schiff and Feinstein, Schumer went on to claim that the Russians were behind the public outcry to release the memo, stating:
“Even more extraordinary is that the actions of Chairman Nunes and his
supporters are being actively parroted by Russian-linked cyber actors on
social media with the intent to discredit U.S. democratic
institutions.”
However, it is critical to note that the Democratic Party is not the
only group opposing the release of the memo to the public. The group who
seems to oppose the release of the memo more than anyone is the very
group of people whose job it is to hold the government accountable and
expose governmental wrongdoing and corruption, the Press.
For example, MSNBC has come out against the release of information to the American public, with Andrea Mitchell tweeting:
“How will they justify releasing this memo? Intelligence community is
on fire about what they say risks 40 years of congressional oversight of
the agencies.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also chimed in, tweeting
Schiff’s statement that: “There is no longer a valid basis for the
White House to review the altered document, since this new version is
not the same document shared with the entire House and on which
Committee Members voted.”
MSNBC’s John Heilemann even went so far as to inquire as to whether or not Rep. Nunes had been compromised:
“Is it possible that the Republican chairman of the House Intel
Committee has been compromised by the Russians? Is it possible that we
actually have a Russian agent running the House Intel Committee on the
Republican side?”
Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, also attacked the memo, calling it a “sleazy political purge”, and an attempt to “misinform the public”.
The Washington Free Beacon
reports that CNN’s Brian Karem also attacked the release of the memo,
claiming that it would serve as a “tipping point for our democracy”, and
warned that the document’s release may lead the country to be ruled by
“demagoguery and despotism.”
Karem went on to further state
that the release of the memo is “…simply and nothing else but a power
play, a demagogue pushing back against the Democratic process”,
comparing it to a “mafia boss gone mad.”
CNN’s Phil Mudd also attacked the release of the memo, claiming that it was created through “collusion” between Nunes staffers and the White House.
The Atlantic’s Senior Editor David Frum also came out against government transparency and the release of the memo, tweeting:
“The *full* full transparency argument would be: release all tax
returns, corporate records, campaign emails, and other documents
relevant to Donald Trump’s Russia/WikiLeaks connections.”
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