Geraldo: 'Release The D--- Memo' - If Factual, Entire Russia Probe Built Upon 'Cancerous, Rotten Foundation'
Fox News correspondent-at-large called for the release of the classified memo that some members of Congress have said details abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under the Obama administration.
“If the FISA warrant was based on the dossier, then there’s a rotten foundation,” Geraldo Rivera said on Fox News. “You can’t build a building on a cancerous rotten foundation.”
He added that he thinks “the American people deserve to know.”
Republican members of Congress have described the information contained in the four-page document as “shocking,” “troubling” and “alarming.” At least one representative compared the activities contained in the memo to those of the Russian KGB.
“Release the d— memo,” Rivera said. “This is a country that’s supposed to be an open government.”
He then added that “the heart of this memo suggests very strongly that the valued and vaunted FBI was not impartial.”
“If the FBI was not impartial, in other words, if it was politically motivated in any aspect of the investigation of Russia-gate and the president’s involvement, then people should know that,” Rivera said. “People should know that there is a corruption, however difficult it is to come to grips with that, a corruption at the heart of whoever is dealing with this probe.”
He added, “It is better for the American people to know what is going on.”
Before the U.S. House Intelligence Committee voted to release the memo Monday, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told Fox that he thought the memo should be released to the public.
“If you … want to know whether or not the dossier was used in court proceedings, whether or not it was vetted before it was used. … If you are interested in who paid for the dossier … then, yes, you’ll want the memo to come out,” Gowdy said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Gowdy also suggested during the interview that the memo addresses a persistent rumor that the FBI under James Comey considered the now-discredited anti-Trump “dossier” in seeking surveillance warrants on members of the Trump organization during the 2016 presidential campaign.
President Donald Trump, whose administration has previously indicated it did not object to the memo being released to the public, has five days to step in to prevent its release.
“We want full transparency,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday. “That’s what we have said all along.”
The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said the vote made Monday a “very sad day, I think, in the history of this committee,” Fox News reported.
“Today this committee voted to put the president’s personal interests, perhaps their own political interests, above the national interests,” the Democrat said, announcing the vote to the media. Schiff said the vote was strictly along party lines, with no Democrats voting to release the details of the memo.
A Justice Department official urged Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., last week to keep the memo classified.
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