No longer a matter of national security.
Via BI:
Following the release of the controversial memo spearheaded by Rep. Devin Nunes on alleged misconduct by the Justice Department and the FBI, Democrats came out on the offensive against this weekend, calling the memo “reckless” and a “political hit job.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, reiterated his opposition to the claims made in the memo on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday.
“The interest wasn’t oversight,” Schiff told host George Stephanopoulos. “The interest was a political hit job on the FBI in the service of the president.”
The memo, released Friday, purports to show that the FBI and the Department of Justice bypassed protocol to improperly surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. While Republicans said the document promotes transparency and holds the government accountable, Democrats and top intelligence and law enforcement officials have warned that it contains a host of inaccuracies and omissions that mischaracterize the intelligence community’s work.
On Sunday, Schiff argued that not only does the memo not vindicate President Donald Trump in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s possible cooperation — it proves the probe is legitimate.
“What the memo indicates is the investigation didn’t begin with Carter Page, it actually began with George Papadopoulos, someone who was a foreign policy adviser for candidate Trump and someone who was meeting secretly with the Russians and talking about the stolen Clinton e-mails,” Schiff said.
“So quite to the contrary, even this very flawed memo demonstrates what the origin of the investigation was and that origin involved the issue of collusion,” he added.[…]
Schiff has said he’s worried Trump would use the memo to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is accused of extending a surveillance warrant based on a largely unverified dossier connecting Trump and Russia.
“I’m very concerned about it,” Schiff told CNN on Friday. “There’s no telling what this president is capable of.”
Durbin cautioned against the ramifications firing Rosenstein could create.
“This would be an extreme event and one that I say with some caution could create a constitutional crisis in this country,” Durbin told Tapper on Sunday. “The question at that moment is whether or not the majority Republicans in the House and the Senate will stand up for the rule of law and the Constitution if the president takes that extreme position.”