President Donald Trump met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein within the last hour over the Democratic intelligence memo, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday.
Sanders said Trump has seen the memo and that it will undergo the same review process as its Republican counterpart, which was released last week.
“The President has seen the memo. He met with the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensetin within the last hour to discuss some of the differences between the two memos,” she said. “And we are undergoing the exact same process that we did with the previous memo in which we will go through a full and thorough legal and national security review. We are in the middle of the process.”
Last week’s publication of the Republican-crafted memo came over FBI objections, which warned it had “grave concerns” about the incomplete picture the GOP memo painted. And as Democrats warn Trump’s opposition to the arguments laid out in their memo may lead Trump to block its release, Trump’s allies are eager to point to the government process as a buffer to Trump’s views.
After it was released, Trump claimed the GOP memo “totally vindicates” him in the Russia investigation, even though the document did not address the allegations of collusion or obstruction of justice that have become central to the special counsel’s probe.
