The DOJ Is Being Sued After Withholding Information About Nunes Memo
The Daily Beast is suing the Department of Justice to “shed light” on the publication of the Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) memo and the subsequent edits made to the Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) counter memo, Law and Crime reports.
The lawsuit accuses the DOJ of failing to respond to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Daily Beast on March 15, 2018, which asked for records pertaining to “the classification or declassification review of information contained within the Nunes Memo” and “the classification or declassification review of information contained within the Schiff Memo.”
Those requests were sent to four DOJ agencies, including the FBI and Attorney General’s office. As Law and Crime notes, the government was required to respond to those “within 10 days after the date of the request.”
Attorney Bradley P. Moss, who is working on the lawsuit, told Law and Crime the lawsuit aims to “shed light on how exactly DOJ coordinated with both the White House and Congress in conducting its original review of the Nunes Memo, as well as providing the ‘technical assistance” President Trump ordered regarding review of the subsequent Schiff Memo.’”
“The publication of the Nunes Memo was unprecedented in its defiance of classification concerns and the ability of a Congressional committee to pit the President against his own Justice Department,” Moss said in a statement.
Mark Zaid, who is also working on the lawsuit, told Law and Crime the declassification and release of the Nunes and Schiff memos “were completely out of the norm.”
“That the WH and HPSCI politicized the intelligence process, over DOJ/FBI objections, is even worse,” Zaid said. “This lawsuit seeks to reveal what happened beyond the scenes.”
