Trump opted to declassify the Nunes memo, but sent the Democrats’ rebuttal back to the panel for further redactions.

During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked the FBI Director Chris Wray whether Trump’s role in all this presents a conflict of interest.

“Do you believe there is an actual—or at least the appearance of—a conflict of interest when the president is put in charge of declassifying information that could complicate an ongoing investigation into his own campaign?” Harris asked.

Wray replied that it was “the president’s responsibility” to “object or not to declassification,” and that “legally” Trump does have the ability to declassify information at his discretion. Asked whether he thought Trump “should recuse himself from reviewing and declassifying sensitive FBI material related to this investigation,” however, Wray put the onus on White House counsel Don McGahn.

“I think recusal questions are something I would encourage the president to talk to White House counsel about,” Wray said.

David Kris, a FISA expert who served as the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s National Security Division, told me that recusal questions, especially as they relate to the commander-in-chief, are complicated.

“For example, you can’t easily cut off the president from all intelligence about Russia, or even Russian efforts to influence our elections or governmental policies,” he said. But with respect to criminal investigations, he warned, Trump should be wary of repeating Richard Nixon’s mistakes.

“Nixon showed us that level of intimacy between politics and law enforcement with his infamous ‘enemies list,’ which outlined ways to ‘use the available federal machinery,’ like IRS audits, ‘to screw our political enemies,’” Kris said. “Since then, every presidential administration, from Carter to Trump, has adopted policies limiting interactions between the White House and the Justice Department to protect the independence of prosecutorial decisions.”

Frank Montoya Jr., a former FBI special agent who retired in 2016 after more than a decade overseeing the FBI’s national security investigations and operations, was unequivocal: “Trump should not be reviewing this information.”

“Previous administrations, post Nixon, have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from investigations involving staff, or potentially themselves,” Montoya told me.

In probes like Iran-Contra under Ronald Reagan or the Valerie Plame leak investigation under George W. Bush, Montoya said, “the executive branch maintained a hands-off approach because of concerns that it could be perceived as obstruction of justice, or abuse of power and undue influence in a legitimate investigation.”

It is unclear whether Trump has considered recusing himself or spoken to McGahn about it. Neither McGahn nor Trump’s lawyers returned requests for comment. Montoya agreed with Wray, however, that this is a conversation McGahn should have with Trump.