Page 3 - Simpson Memo News Today

Republicans on the senate intelligence committee, they were simultaneously released so you could at least look at both sets of facts. >> well, it goes to what john mcloughlin talked about earlier when he lamented the fact that this is probably permanently going to change -- i say permanently, its going to take a good decade, i think, frankly, for the relationship between the legislative branch and the intelligence community to get repaired. this is going to be the partisan skepticism thats going...

This document. mike is on the hill where it has been released. mike? >> i just got off a conference call with members of devin nunes staff. they went through what they consider to be their key findings from the memo. i can read some of them to you now. its largely what i should say we have been led to understand by some of the members who have read the memo, i wouldnt say there are two new surprises but let me hit a few points. the first and most important they cited was that the steele dossier ...

Trusting evaluation of it. and they have broken that trust. so i think thats the main thing we will remember here, and its been broken before but not to this extent. now, to your specific point, if you are in the intelligence community now, you might think twice about what you are going to write down on a piece of paper. you might think twice about what you are going to share. you may share it, but you may worry about whether in sharing it, it will be taken and used for partisan political purpos...

And they believe this does damage to the whole fisa process. as of late yesterday, early this morning, i dont think there was a plan to say anything more about it. they certainly knew what it was going to be. i think the feeling was they had their say and they didnt want to keep this sort of back and forth going between the fbi and the white house over this. so i dont know, i think the justice department is considering whether to say anything but theres been no decision about that. i think they ...

Court what has happened since the last extension, but remember, its just probable cause. where does that standard come from? from the constitution, the fourth amendment. so its not beyond -- proof beyond a reasonable doubt type of finding. its probable cause, and did the court have probable cause, regardless of the source of funding, did it have probable cause and the answer appears to be clearly yes. >> pete williams, your take on how the justice department, the fbi, are going to be reacting to...

Only is misleading, but could jeopardize an underlying investigation and could jeopardize national security information, and he was point blank ignored by the president. >> i would just reiterate one other thing. the originating agency usually has the controlling power over what is declassified and what is not. we saw that with the clinton e-mails where much to her distress, it was cia that was dictating to the state department what could be or could not be declassified. >> they have broken that...

Transmitted from the committee or at least printed. as well, we have a statement from judiciary committee democrats in the house. judiciary democrats saying republicans are complicit in efforts to obstruct justice with the release of the nunes memo. joining us now, chris matthews. host of "hardball." we have been watching and listening as this is all going down and the conclusion by the democrats and some republicans in the senate, certainly, is that this is very partisan, cherry-picked and is, ...

Incomplete. thats the first point. the second point is that the letter accompanying this return to the house of its own document from don mcgahn, the white house counsel, answers one question that we had wondered about that we had heard about, but makes it clear that the director of national intelligence and the justice department weighed in with the white house on whether this should be released and thirdly, the memo in essence questions what happened in the foreign intelligence surveillance co...

Women. mike -- i mean matt miller, you know so well the dedication, the sacrifice and the danger with which these men and women deal every day. >> yeah. thats right. one of the things that i think they have to be worried about is that the release of this memo jeopardizes their intelligence relationships, jeopardizes the work they do, and that kind of brings us to this sham process that the president has run here in deciding to declassify this. look, i participated in declassification processes, ...

President did not answer the question, do you still have confidence in rosenstein. that of course is rod rosenstein. chuck todd, you heard him commenting briefly about north korea with big disputes there. we can get to that later. so importantly, he has declassified the memo, its been sent to the house. they are about to release it. we know it has been described as cherry-picked, inaccurate, of grave concern to the fbi. >> well, i have to say, the house republican intel folks are actually making...