Tuesday, January 30, 2018
After GOP
Votes to #ReleaseTheMemo, ACLU Says Dems Have 'Duty' to Make FISA Intel Public
Civil libertarians argue Republicans are
"cherry-picking" to help Trump by voting to release only secret memo
and not underlying intelligence
House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
speak to the media about Committee's investigation into Russian interference in
the U.S. presidential election, at the U.S. Capitol on March 15, 2017 in
Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
For what
critics are denouncing as blatantly partisan reasons that have nothing to do
with concerns about mass surveillance and everything to do with protecting
President Donald Trump from an active investigation, House
Republicans voted on
Monday to release a secret memo that purports to show the FBI abused its power
in spying on a Trump campaign adviser while blocking a Democratic report
which explains how the GOP memo was "cherry-picked" from underlying
intelligence material.
"The
Nunes memo on FISA surveillance of a Trump adviser should be made public—but
the Schiff report must be made public at the same time. Trump's supporters
can't be allowed to cherry-pick their way to undermining the Mueller
investigation."
—ACLU
—ACLU
Though
Democrats have come under fire from journalists and privacy advocates for their
"supine"
faith in the benevolence of the FBI—an institution that has a long history
of appalling
criminality, sanctioned by
both parties—the ACLU wrote in a series of tweets after Monday's
vote that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and others in his party are correct to be
skeptical of GOP motives, especially given their refusal to release the
intelligence underlying the four-page memo.
If the
memo, drafted by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), is ultimately released, Democrats
have a "duty" to "read the Schiff report and all other
underlying documents on the House floor," the ACLU argued.
According
to the narrative peddled by the GOP and its partners in
right-wing media, the memo the House Intelligence Committee voted
along party lines to release Monday night demonstrates that the Justice
Department and the FBI conducted unlawful surveillance of Trump's presidential
campaign, which they claim
discredits the FBI's Russia investigation.
"The
House Intelligence Committee, and the entire congressional oversight apparatus,
needs systematic reform."
—Demand Progress
—Demand Progress
But civil
libertarians have consistently argued that Nunes cannot be trusted and that the
fight over the memo's release has been more about partisan political
maneuvering than transparency for
the good of the public.
The fact
that Republicans and Democrats "came together to push into law the
privacy-destroying FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act just a few weeks
back" demonstrates that the struggle over the Republican memo "is
about who has power, not protecting the American people against the
inappropriate exercise of that power," the advocacy group Demand Progress
said in a statement on
Monday.
"Rep.
Nunes is hell-bent on protecting President Trump at all costs, and Rep.
Schiff's supine deference to the intelligence agencies undermines Congress's
role as a check on the executive branch," added Demand Progress policy
director Daniel Schuman. "The House Intelligence Committee, and the entire
congressional oversight apparatus, needs systematic reform."
As Glenn
Greenwald and Jon Schwartz argued in
a piece for The Intercept earlier this month, Republicans and
Trump could easily defeat these allegations of partisan opportunism by either
using their constitutional abilities to make public the intelligence behind the
memo or leaking the information to the press.
If they
fail to do so, Greenwald and Schwartz concluded, they will prove themselves to
be "shameless frauds."
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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