All of the information in this article has been taken from an article posted at The Conservative Treehouse yesterday. The #ReleaseTheMemo movement has been successful.
The article at The Conservative Treehouse includes the following:
The article explains what is involved in releasing the memo and the steps that are necessary in the process in order to comply with the law.
The article reports:
Once the House Intelligence Committee votes to declassify the four-page memo, the White House, National Security Adviser (H.R. McMaster) and National Security Council will have five days to review the content. The White House will likely have a brief review by the NSC and the Office of Legal Counsel of the content, and then issue approval for the release.
…Secondly, while it might seem like a good idea for President Trump to declassify the Nunes memo, if given by the Intel Committee, it would not be prudent to do so. Within this classified document Donald Trump is the subject of adverse action outlined therein.
…Therefore the best route as constructed by Nunes and Goodlatte would be for the House to vote to declassify, pass on to the Executive for review, then President Trump grants approval for the request of the House (legislative branch).
By law, all attempts by the legislative branch to declassify intelligence information must be given to the executive branch for review in advance of release. This is because the executive branch needs to see if any current intelligence operations might be compromised by information not known to the legislative branch.
The National Security Council and any impacted offices of the intelligence information (CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, U.S. DoS, DOD, etc.) review, provide opinion, and sign off prior to executive approval and release.
It is not just this declassification that goes through this process, all declassification goes through this process. In this example, presumably, the President has no adverse reason to block the declassification request and it is likely all approvals will happen quite quickly.
After the White House approves of the HPSCI request, the Memo then becomes public.
That’s when Democrats will attack the memo as being authored and misrepresented by Chairman Devin Nunes. This is the politics.
We need to remember a few things here. First of all, the Democrats DO NOT want this memo released. It is becoming obvious that there are things in the memo that make the Democratic party look really bad–such as using the government to spy on political opponents. Watergate was simply attempted spying and people went to jail. This allegedly was using government agencies to spy–many people should go to jail. Secondly, if and when the memo is released, the Democrats will do everything they can to discredit it. However, at some point this month, the Inspector General’s report is due out, and I suspect that will confirm much (if not all) of what is in the memo.
The article further notes what will happen if the Democrats claim the memo is not what it seems to be:
If/when this happens (highly likely it will), Chairman Nunes will then request the entire House of Representatives be given the opportunity to see the underlying FISA documentation that led to the summary.
The underlying FISA documentation likely includes the DOJ/FBI FISA application as presented to the FISA court; again, likely to include the “Clinton/Steele Dossier”.
Additionally, the FISA-702 raw data will include the FBI “searches” on Trump officials that led to the upstream collection of information and the subsequent “unmasking” of Trump officials.
Releasing the underlying FISA documentation -that proves the Nunes FISA memo- will likely follow a similar path as the Nunes memo itself. Again, this is a process, and within each of these processes there are revelations as to the scope of the corruption and conspiracy.
The article concludes:
In April and May 2017 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and NSA Director Admiral Rogers, began assembling a pathway for Devin Nunes to climb out of that intelligence box. ODNI Dan Coats declassified the FISA Court opinion, and that opened the door for Horowitz, Grassley, Goodlatte and Nunes to question the content therein that circled the unlawful action of the DOJ and FBI.
Where we are today is a step in the investigative process that is an outcome of months of work by Coats, Rogers and Horowitz to extract Chairman Devin Nunes and bring all prior DOJ and FBI corruption to the surface.
I strongly suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article. The author is amazingly detailed in his research and lists his various sources at the end of the article.
Look for the Democrats to stage a major distraction about the time the memo is released. It may be another government shutdown or it may be some sort of march or filibuster. Based on what I have heard, the Democrats will do almost anything to keep this memo off of the front page of the news. Stay tuned.