by the United States House Intelligence Committee

“ It is one thing to subpoena government officials for information as part of an investigation. It is another to say that those very entities are under investigation.
So this is a revelation for us. There have been public reports from time to time that there was a secret subset people in the majority who were conducting their own investigation. I guess this is what that was referring to. But we have now learned the rather momentous fact that I guess the FBI is under investigation by this committee and so is the Department of Justice. ”

“ And if we were to put out to the public the most sensitive materials that they have trusted us to look at without asking them to conduct a review, without collaborating together to make sure that inaccuracies are not disseminated to the public, we will break the trust with them. ”

“ It is obviously no secret that this investigation has introduced a very sharp and ugly brand of partisanship into the committee.
We are about to take a very, very consequential step. Because I understand, from the answers to my questions, that we will release the majority memos unredacted. And if there is to be a commitment to transparency and to symmetry, which I heard the chairman endorse, the minority memo will be released to the public in unredacted form.
Two things will happen: An immense amount of classified information will be made available to the public. ”

“ Like everyone on this committee, I take seriously the obligation to keep this Nation's most sensitive secrets out of the public domain. However, when there are abuses that go to the core of our democracy. Americans deserve to know.
Contrary to the claims made in the media, this committee has been transparent with the FBI. Yesterday Chairman Nunes and Chairman Gowdy discussed the memo with FBI Director Wray and provided him with a copy to review. ”

“ And I was in a terrible position. as I think we all are still, in that I was asked to vote on the majority memo never, despite being the second-senior Democrat on the committee, never having reviewed the underlying intelligence. I think all of us, perhaps, but two remain in that position.
So if that is true -- and I think it is true -- there is absolutely no way for any of us to game out what the outcome is 3 weeks from now when the press has done their thing, when the DOJ and the FBI have made their arguments, about who gets tarred for being imprudent. But it is going to be somebody. ”

“ So, apparently, full transparency doesn't mean full transparency. It means release the majority view first and delay the minority view.
I hope the majority will reconsider. There is nothing that the House Members, upon reading this memo, can tell us, because they don‘t have any more access to the underlying documents than the rest of this committee. So that is the most paltry of excuses for putting off the disclosure of the minority memo. What are we to --
MR. CONAWAY: Would the gentleman yield for a second?
MR. SCHIFF: Yes. ”

“ There is nothing to be lost by giving the FBI and the Department of Justice a chance to give us their feedback before we take this unprecedented step unless we are afraid to hear what they have to say.
My secondary motion would postpone consideration of a vote to disclose publicly the classified document prepared by majority staff until the Department of Justice and the FBI have had an opportunity to brief all House Members in a classified setting on the potential national security and law enforcement impact or harm from such disclosure, including any impact on sources and methods. ”

“ MR. QUIGLEY: Mr. Chairman, the investigation you reference, when was that notion of the investigation brought before the minority to discuss? As time immemorial, we will have at least had some discussion about how to go forward with any investigations, much less of our own DOJ and FBI. When was that discussed with --
THE CHAIRMAN: Is the gentleman yielding?
MR. QUIGLEY: I am certainly --
THE CHAIRMAN: So as you are aware, we have issued several subpoenas that were opposed by the minority. We brought the -- this memo to make it available to the House. That was opposed by the minority. ”

“ Representatives Nunes, Conaway, King, LoBiondo, Rooney, Ros-Lehtinen, Wenstrup, Stewart of Utah, Crawford, Gowdy, Stefanik, Hurd, Schiff, Himes, Sewell, Carson, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Castro, and Heck.
THE CHAIRMAN: A quorum being present, the Select Committee on Intelligence will come to order. As a reminder, even though we are in a closed space, we are in open session, and a transcript of the proceedings will be released in accordance with House rules. ”

“ I tell my constituents that if they are Democrats or Republicans, they ought to care about this just as much as we do, because you could see scenarios just as these, the ones that we witnessed, in which Republicans were attacked, could be attacked by Russian. ”