On Monday, the House voted to send the Democratic memo, explaining all the ways the Trump–Nunes memo screwed up, over to the White House. It may seem that there are only two choices: Hold on to the pretense of believing in transparency for at least three days in a row and release the memo, or make an obviously self-serving decision and pitch the memo in the nearest oubliette while making noises about “national security.”
But there’s a third option. While Trump sent the Republican memo back to the House without so much as a smudge, he has the option to redact portions of the Democratic memo—again, claiming security needs—which could end up, just coincidentally, so chopping up the memo that it de-fangs the attempt to point out the problems with the story Nunes and Trump have been trying to sell.
Rep. Adam Schiff predicted Tuesday that the White House would not block the release of a Democratic memo related to the Russia investigation, but he warned the administration against trying to obfuscate the document by redacting portions that could embarrass President Donald Trump. ...
“What I'm more concerned about … is that they make political redactions. That is, not redactions to protect sources or methods, which we’ve asked the Department of Justice and the FBI to do, but redactions to remove information they think is unfavorable to the president," he said. "That could be a real problem, and that's our main concern at this point.”
Republican Rep. Rick Crawford, interviewed on CNN, declared that he “absolutely” thinks that the “Democrat memo” needs to be redacted. Other Republicans have stated that the Democratic memo needs to go “through the same process” as the work that Nunes’ staff worked with the White House to produce. Except that Trump said that he would release the Nunes memo even before he supposedly read it.
Despite Trump’s Monday statement that “We caught ‘em. Oh, they didn’t think they’d be caught, but we caught ‘em,” he is one of the few Republicans who still seems to believe that the Nunes memo was not a net negative for Trump. By confirming that the investigation was launched months earlier based on George Papadopoulos bragging about his Russian contacts, the Trump–Nunes memo deflated its own main point. And the Democratic memo promises to show just how contrived that point really was.
The vote to release the Democratic memo on Monday was unanimous. That doesn’t mean Trump is going to either release the memo or hold back on the editing pen.