Correction Thread: On August 4, Senate Intel voted to approve the *classified* version of Volume 5, not the declassified version.

Rubio/Warner issued a statement saying they are working “in the coming days” to release a redacted version, but there still could be a fight ahead.

When I first read reports saying the Committee had voted to approve Volume 5, I assumed they approved the report with the redactions that came back from ODNI the week of July 20. Looking closer at it, that’s not what it says. It says they approved the “classified” version.

This actually clears up an important point, because it means that the classified version had *not* been approved by the full Committee before it was submitted to ODNI for declassification on May 15. If it had been, there would be no reason to vote on it again on August 4.

This implies that the version of Volume 5 submitted to ODNI on May 15 may have been approved only by Warner and Burr. Which may mean they were the only two members of the Committee who worked on the report. I’m speculating here, but I think these are reasonable assumptions.

It would be difficult for a 15 person Committee to work on a complex, 1000-page report. And, given that it’s an ultra-sensitive investigation into the POTUS, it would make sense to limit the number of people working on it.

Again, if the entire Committee drafted and approved the version of Volume 5 submitted to ODNI on May 15, then why would they vote on that exact same classified version on August 4? I think the answer is that they didn’t vote on it until August 4, but I’m just speculating.

If I’m right and Burr and Warner ran the Volume 5 process, that would be far more likely to produce a report that’s damaging to Trump. And it would help explain why Trump only came after Burr (for insider trading) rather than targeting the other GOP Committee members.

So the good news, I think, is that Burr and Warner seem like they may have controlled the pen on Volume 5. The bad news is that they still had to get approval from the full Committee.

Warner said this morning the classified version of Volume 5 (without redactions) was approved on 8/4 with “overwhelming” bipartisan support. I take that to mean it wasn’t unanimous, but more than half of the 8 GOP members voted in favor. (Otherwise it wouldn’t be “overwhelming.”)

Burr was going to vote with the seven Dems in favor of approving Volume 5, so it was always going to be approved. Hard to know whether the other GOP who voted for it did so because they wanted to or because they were afraid of how history would judge them if they didn’t.

The joint Rubio/Warner announcement says they are working on a declassified version that can be released publicly, and Warner said this morning he hopes that will happen “shortly.” But we may still be in a fight over the redactions.

Ultimately, any Dem member of the Committee can enter the entire report into the Congressional Record, so nothing can stop the report from coming out. But Warner has made clear he wants a bipartisan report released publicly, for obvious reasons.

If Warner runs with the report himself, Trump will paint him as politicizing intelligence and will claim the whole thing is “fake news” and a “hoax.” But a bipartisan report will be far harder to spin. So Warner has an incentive to play nice, while also holding the leverage.

The long and short of this is that it may take some more work to get the report released, and we can help by continuing to press for the GOP Committee members other than Burr (Rubio, Cotton, Cornyn, Collins, Risch, Blunt, and Sasse) to #ReleaseVolume5.

Warner sounds confident that the Committee will get the report out to us. I don’t think he’d use phrases like “in the coming days” and “shortly” if he thought this was going to be a protracted battle. Keep the faith and keep pushing for the truth.

#ReleaseVolume5