Tuesday on Birmingham Talk 99.5’s “The Matt & Aunie Show,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) offered his view on the release of the much-anticipated House Intelligence Committee memo that reportedly alleges political bias and interference in the American democratic process by the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Palmer told co-host Matt Murphy and Andrea Lindenberg that despite criticism from the media and congressional Democrats, he applauded House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) for his handling of the situation.
“I think Devin Nunes, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has done a great job,” Palmer said. “He’s been very methodical in how he’s gone about this. I know there’s some people, you know, they want everything instantly. But I think he’s done this the right way. He actually went farther with this than, frankly, I think I would have. I don’t know that I would have run it by the director of the FBI. But, I’m glad he did in retrospect. I don’t know if it’ll be this week or the first of next week, but the memo will go to the president. If the president doesn’t have a problem with it, then I think the full House will vote on it, and it will come out.”
“The fact that Chairman Nunes ran that by the Intelligence Committee and they OK’d releasing it, I don’t think it’s a problem,” he replied. “They know better than I do. I think there are some issues that I have concerns about that’s in the memo that being released to the public. At this point, there’s probably practically everything that’s been in the memo has been in the media in some form or fashion, or at least suspected.”
Palmer said there were two considerations regarding his position on the release of the memo: national security and a potential future criminal prosecution.
“There’s two things that are first and foremost in my mind,” Palmer continued. “Number one — I do not want to do anything that compromises our ability to protect the American people. National security has to be our number one priority. Number two — were there to be any kind of criminal charges filed, I don’t want to do anything that compromises the ability to get justice.”
Palmer said he “liked the way” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was going about handling these matters.
“I think slow and methodical, and sure is the way to go,” he said. “I think that’s what you’re seeing with the Justice Department and I think that’s what you’re seeing with the way this memo is handled.”
Where Palmer said there was much to be desired was with Nunes’ counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee with ranking Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
“Congressman Schiff is the pot calling the kettle black, I guess, in some respect,” he said. “He’s the one that raised ethics questions about Chairman Nunes and forced him to step aside temporarily while he went through and cooperated fully with the Ethics Committee. And just as we all knew, there was nothing to it. It was strictly a political ploy on the part of Adam Schiff. I don’t have a real high regard for anything he says. And I think as this continues to go along, people will realize he’s the guy who is politicizing things. Eventually, as they say in the country, the chickens will come home to roost.”
Palmer urged some of his colleagues that were hyping the memo to “tone down the hyperbole.”
“I thought they had gotten a little too excited about what’s in the memo,” he added. “It’s very serious — there’s no question about it. But it’s also complicated. It’s something you have to navigate through the memo to really understand it. The thing I want to emphasize is the memo is not the end of everything.”
Jeff Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and works as the editor of Breitbart TV. Follow Jeff on Twitter @jeff_poor.
