
Donald Trump's campaign to release the Republicans' FBI smear memo could be as much of a risk to national security as the memo itself, Shareblue Media senior writer Eric Boehlert pointed out on Sunday.

Republicans staked everything on the release of the much-hyped intelligence memo that Trump's own Justice Department and FBI warned could compromise national security. When the memo turned out to be an embarrassing flop, no one was angrier than Fox News host Sean Hannity, who had pushed the release for weeks.

But as it turns out, Hannity was also privately advising Trump on the memo, egging him on to support its release. On MSNBC's "AM Joy" Sunday morning, Boehlert called out Trump's hypocrisy in discussing a classified memo with Hannity.

"Do you think Sean Hannity is talking to Trump from some super-secret, super-secure location?" Boehlert asked. "No."


"Who do you think is listening to every one of those phone calls?" Boehlert continued. "Ask national security experts. Theyll tell you. The Russians."

Boehlert and host Joy Reid then pointed out the consternation that surrounded the mere possibility that Hillary Clinton might have made sensitive information vulnerable (which she did not do), and contrasted it with the recklessness surrounding this memo.

"This is classified information!" Reid exclaimed, indicating the memo.

Trump is known to use his own, non-secure phone for communications, and there's no reason to assume that Hannity was using a secure phone, either. Trump receives classified briefings on a regular basis, and has access to other classified information, and there is no telling what he discussed with Hannity on those calls  or as Boehlert noted, who else was listening.

But we do know that when Trump and Fox News started to hype this memo, an army of Russia-linked social media bots joined in to promote the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag.

The memo fiasco has exposed so much that is phony about Republicans' efforts to shield Trump, but nothing quite so phony as their alleged concern for our security.