Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, and Warner Send Letter to DOJ on Materials Briefed to “Gang of 8”

Dear Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Director Wray:

We remain deeply troubled by President Donald Trump and his legal team’s persistent efforts to interfere with the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation and undermine your agencies’ lawful activities.

Most recently, Rudy Giuliani, one of the President’s personal attorneys, repeated publicly that the White House and the President’s lawyers expect access to classified information of the utmost sensitivity related to the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation. Executive agencies earlier had briefed this information to select Members of Congress in response to a publicly-announced directive from President Trump. Giuliani also said that the President will refuse to be interviewed by the Special Counsel, unless the President’s attorneys are permitted to review related classified documents.

These demands, if fulfilled, would grossly violate our system of checks and balances, established procedure and fundamental norms. Although he has not been indicted, President Trump’s own conduct reportedly remains under examination by the Special Counsel. And absent an indictment, the subjects of federal investigation cannot access law enforcement or related national security information for any reason.

As the President’s attorney has made clear, his legal team wishes to obtain the classified information at issue, not for any legitimate purpose—but instead to frustrate and discredit publicly the work of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

These developments leave us concerned that, through his legal team or otherwise, the President will continue to pressure your agencies to divulge investigative information which he, his attorneys, and his congressional allies then could manipulate or even disclose publicly for the President’s personal or political benefit. That would be a terrible abuse of power.

We thus respectfully request that the Department of Justice confirm, in writing, by no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, June 11:

(1) that the following parties have not been given access to the classified information, which executive branch agencies briefed to the “Gang of 8” on May 24, 2018:

Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow, or any other attorney who represents or has represented President Trump in his personal capacity;
White House staff, including attorneys from the White House Counsel’s office;
President Donald J. Trump;
(2) that DOJ and FBI have no plans to convey such information in the future to the President and his attorneys outside of an appropriate judicial proceeding; and

(3) that going forward, DOJ and FBI will not brief additional Members of Congress who are not part of the “Gang of 8” on these matters.

Thank you for your immediate attention to our concerns, which are of the utmost urgency. We look forward to your reply.

Looks like the Democrats believe someone leaked information from the May 24th meeting to the President. They are making sure the DOJ and FBI followed protocol, which to me, looks like they think it was someone from the Gang of 8 who did the leaking. By process of elimination, we know it wasn’t the Democrats who leaked. Burr has been supportive of the investigation, Ryan seems to be mostly staying out of it, McConnell came out in support after the meeting, which leaves Nunes. Nunes hasn’t said much after the meeting, almost like he has gone to ground.

I think Nunes leaked info he shouldn’t have. Which kind of lines up with the President and Giuliani going crazy with all this talk about Pardoning.

Do you remember when Christopher Wray and Rod Rosenstein visited Paul Ryan about the requests for information? It was reported that they had reservations about how it would be handled. And it was reported that one of their major concerns was with Nunes.

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And you know for certain it wasn’t one of democrats?

Goes back to dems accusing others for dirty tactics that libs like doing.

“…not for any legitimate purpose—but instead to frustrate and discredit publicly the work of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

So releasing the facts of what was done will “discredit publicly the work of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation”?
Sounds like we need to know what was going on.

Could be, but looking at the group, one sore thumb with an exceptional recent history of being a leaker stands out

Devin Nunes.

Right, like the last time Devin leaked something.

Really unlikely that Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff or Warner gabe the info to Trump

Example:

This was the thing that was going to prove that darstardly blue dog dem warner was in cahoots with cahooters.

And then it wasn’t:

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So Trumps meltdown about Pardons is just coincidence? You havent found it odd, that with the exception of Nunes, the Republicans who have seen info from the investigation have come out in support of it?

To be fair, Nunes likes to insulate himself from actually reading the information so that he can say these wild ass things.

When he needs to know something, he begs Gowdy to read the material and describe it to him. So a year or two from now when he’s proven 1000x times over to be an absolute liar and shill and can’t get reelected and moves to K-street he’ll blame everyone else but himself.

Yeah…OK.

It is an active, ongoing investigation. It would be improper to reveal details of an ongoing investigation prior to its conclusion. But you already knew this.

Also, there is this…

With Trump freaking out, Giuliani talking about frame jobs, and Paul Ryan saying no one is above the law, I feel something big was revealed at that meeting, and Nunes spilled the beans.

Burr just came out and agreed with Ryan and Gowdy as well. That means every single attendee of these meetings, save Nunes, has now come out in full agreement that everything the FBI did here was appropriate, above board, and the proper thing for them to have done given the information they possessed at the time.

So yeah, that basically leaves the situation as we see it. They saw something damning, Nunes ran to Team Trump about it, and now the circus is in full swing setting up multiple plausible outs for if/when the information leads to something actionable.

Noted constitutional “scholar” and right-wing darling Alan Dershowitz has given the Trumpists their latest way to approach this issue. The Framers simply had it wrong when they created the system of checks and balances that our government has operated under for more than 200 years.

The President wasn’t wrong when he said I want loyalty from my Attorney General. It’s the constitution that’s wrong for allowing that kind of division to occur.

I now expect to hear the anti-American Trumpists to begin chanting this new theme that the constitution is simply wrong and that Trump is right.

Interesting, Nunes has been very quiet lately.

You seem to be pretending your comment related to what I said. The complaint in the article was that releasing the information could be used to discredit the DOJ and FBI. I was simply indicating that if the information discredits those agencies, we should know about it.
But you already knew this.

How can you be briefed when no documents were given to back up the DOJ statements? More lies from the left.