CNN’s Wolf Blitzer grills Republican rep on Nunes memo release

CNN host Wolf Blitzer on Friday grilled a Republican on the House Intelligence Committee for releasing a controversial memo alleging improper surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser without a Democrat-written memo countering its claims. 

“If you’re so confident, congressman, why didn’t you release the Democratic minority report, the 10 pages that they wrote rebutting many of the points you’re making right now?” Blitzer asked Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) in an interview.

“Why not release them simultaneously?” Blitzer added, noting that was what the committee has done in his decades of reporting on the panel.

Stewart said that the Democratic memo had not been “scrubbed” yet, telling Blitzer that Republicans would vote to release it in due time.

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But Blitzer pushed back, asking why Republicans would quickly release the GOP-drafted memo but have a vetting period for the Democratic report. He later added that releasing only one memo led many Americans to see it as a political move.

The White House indicated Friday that it is open to releasing the Democratic countermemo after the White House declassified contents of the GOP memo released by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).   

According to the four-page document released by Nunes, the FBI and Department of Justice used a dossier of opposition research funded in part by Democrats to secure a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Stewart argued on CNN that the contents of the memo were too important and had too great an impact on the broader probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia for it not to be released immediately, pressing Blitzer on why they couldn’t focus on the contents of the memo. 

“Because the contents of the memo, congressman, the contents of the memo are being seen as political,” Blitzer said. “So this has seen by at least a big chunk of the American public, congressman, as being a politicized moment in American history, which you could have avoided by simply releasing both memos at the same time, which has always been the case.”

The host dismissed Stewart’s attempts to discuss the contents, saying that the congressman “must be very upset that your committee has been blown apart. Going back many, many decades, I’ve never seen the House Intelligence Committee so partisan as it has become over the last several months.” 

Before its release, Republicans on the committee hailed the memo as evidence that the FBI acted on political bias to initiate what would become the full-fledged investigation into collusion with Russia during the election.