Feb 24, 2018
Three weeks after President Trump claimed to have been "totally vindicated" by Devin Nunes' memo, the White House is slamming the Democratic rebuttal memo as "politically driven" and incomplete.
Between the lines: Trump blocked a previous version of this memo, leading to the redacted version that was released today. Many of the White House's criticisms of this memo mirror what Democrats claimed about the last one — that it cherry picks certain bits of intelligence and doesn't actually prove anything.
"While the Democrats' memorandum attempts to undercut the President politically, the President supported its release in the interest of transparency. Nevertheless, this politically driven document fails to answer serious concerns raised by the Majority's memorandum about the use of partisan opposition research from one candidate, loaded with uncorroborated allegations, as a basis to ask a court to approve surveillance of a former associate of another candidate, at the height of the presidential campaign. As the Majority's memorandum stated, the FISA judge was never informed that Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded the dossier that was a basis for the Department of Justice's FISA application. In addition, the Minority's memo fails to even address the fact that the Deputy FBI Director told the Committee that had it not been for the dossier, no surveillance order would have been sought. As the President has long stated, neither he nor his campaign ever colluded with a foreign power during the 2016 election, and nothing in today's memo counters that fact."— Sarah Sanders