Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) is none too happy about the release of the Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-Calif) memo. Something has her somewhat jumpy about it, and she demonstrated it to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday night, with whom she got testy during a line of questioning.
The back and forth between Pelosi and Cuomo was a tense one, with Pelosi rarely looking Cuomo in the eye.
According to Pelosi, releasing the memo as is is little more than reckless action, and the California congresswoman believes it should be put through some redactions by the intelligence community first. Pelosi said the memo was a “total misrepresentation” of the Democrats, and that the GOP should allow the DOJ to go over it first.
Cuomo explained that the reason Republicans are refusing to do so is because the DOJ is a questionable party surrounding the memo, and would rather not allow the department to cover its tracks before the information is released.
“The DOJ is only one part of the intelligence community — the intelligence community is vast,” Pelosi responded. “It’s the CIA, DNI, national defense. Everybody has their element of it, and sources in that that must be protected. Not only that, I can’t even reference some words that are in it because that would be a violation of the confidentiality, the classified nature.”
Pelosi then danced around for a few minutes about how Republicans are only releasing the memo as a “distraction” from some unnamed issue and that the memo was “not true.” After bashing Republicans, she said she doesn’t want to get into politics and said stopping the release of the memo was a matter of national security, and that the memo is an insult to the sacrifices of the men and women within the intelligence community.
Pelosi finished by claiming there’s not a person in the intelligence community that wouldn’t call the release of the memo “reckless,” a claim that Cuomo had a cold bucket of water to pour on.
“Christopher Wray, director of the FBI obviously, recently selected by President Trump, he got the memo. He could have come out and said: “This is reckless, don’t release it.”
Pelosi didn’t appreciate having her narrative demolished on live TV, and attempted to strike back at Cuomo.
“Let me just say this with all due respect,” Pelosi said with eyebrows furrowed and a hand up to Cuomo. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about right now.”
“But did Christopher Wray look at it or no?” Cuomo asked, not backing down.
“I can’t say whether he did or not,” answered Pelosi, who went on to repeat herself about the memo being a “distraction,” likely from the Republicans’ inability to govern well.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member