Congressman Adam Schiff (D, CA), who sits in the House Intelligence Committee Chairman’s chair, is upset. It seems Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has decided to stop giving verbal briefings of intelligence matters to the House as a whole, but will instead provide written briefings only, and only to House members with the clearances necessary to receive the briefings—a vastly smaller number than the 435 politicians that make up the fully populated House. After all, Ratcliffe has said,
within minutes of one of those briefings ending, a number of members of Congress went to a number of different outlets and leaked classified information for political purposes to create a narrative that simply isn’t true, that somehow Russia is a greater national security threat than China.
Naturally, Schiff twisted his panties over that. He’s beefing that [Fox News‘ cite]
the Trump administration is “hid[ing] behind documents or withhold[ing] documents” and “concealing the truth [and] concealing Russians are again intervening to help the president in his reelection.”
Of course, this is a lie; those documents and the rest of the information are being provided via those written briefings to a more carefully selected (by the House, yet) and more careful audience. Those written briefings will make it harder to leak, easier to demonstrate the biased nature of the leaks, and easier to trace and identify the leaker.
Maybe the real problem is that Schiff won’t be able to leak so extensively.