Donald Trump has five days to decide whether to make the contents of Rep. Devin Nunes’ crackpot memo public, and it’s a safe bet that His Pettiness just won’t be able to resist (not to mention that Axios is reporting as much). In anticipation of that eventuality, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent dialed up Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the Democrats’ No. 2 on the House Intelligence Committee, to gauge his thinking on the matter.
“I’m under no illusion that there’s much probability at all that the Democratic memo ever sees the light of day,” Himes told me. “It is an extraordinarily detailed, point-by-point rebuttal of unbelievably shoddy allegations on the Republican side. If it were to get voted out of committee for public release, I would be very surprised if Trump didn’t block its release.”
Sorry, but this a total loser strategy: Let's just let the tyrants torching our democracy set the terms of debate and see how it goes.
Given the apparent levels of bad faith on display here, do Democrats have any recourse? When I asked Himes if Democrats would take dramatic steps — such as reading the Schiff rebuttal on the floor, if Republicans and/or Trump block its release — he said he couldn’t guarantee that. But Himes did suggest the Nunes memo would blow up in the faces of Trump and Republicans, because its shoddiness will be so obvious and because Democrats will be freer to make the case against it.
“Smart people all over the country will read this thing and realize what a piece of middle school work it is,” Himes said. “If the Nunes memo is declassified, it will have the effect of declassifying some things that I can’t even talk about. So there will be a lot more scope for discussion.”
Democrats are likely playing it safe here to see how the memo plays to the public. That is an absolute mistake. As former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks noted on MSNBC Monday night: "If you’re releasing one, you have to release both. You cannot let the American public sit and linger on what could be a totally false out-of-context report."
Too be clear, Wine-Banks was arguing that it's incumbent upon Republicans to release both memos. But Democrats cannot afford to let Republicans dictate the terms of this discussion without a thorough and informed rebuttal. The GOP base is going to believe whatever crackpot theory White House errand boy Devin Nunes has cooked up, but sway-able voters must be given enough information to make an informed decision. If Democrats wait to see how the Nunes memo is received, they will immediately forfeit their opening to level the playing field.
As for the information being classified, it's certainly not ideal and surely there are ways to mitigate the damage while still providing an illuminating response. But Democrats easily can and should argue that Republicans chose to open this debate by releasing classified materials, leaving Democrats no choice but to give the American people the full complement of information they needed to assess the legitimacy of the secret memo.
These are extraordinary times and counting on "smart people" to simply land on the right conclusion without providing them the necessary tools to get there is a disastrous path for Democrats.
The vast majority of American voters will head to the polls in November inclined to put a necessary check on a party that is showing shameless disregard for its Constitutional duty to provide a check on the Executive branch. If Democrats want voters to believe they are capable of doing the work Republicans have willfully and recklessly declined to do, they better prove it.