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Yes......but. It seems quite logical to me that Trump has known about all of this ever since Admiral Rogers told him about the 'wiretapping', which caused Trump to move his headquarters the next day. So why, being the street fighter that he is, has he not released things before this?

I believe it's because he realizes that the media response would be a cacophony of the Democrat mantra that "Trump is doing this all to cover up his own Russian collusion". The story would all be about Trump's Russian Collusion, rather than about Obama's treason.

There are poorly informed voices who claim President Trump can arbitrarily declassify the Nunes memo. That is false. The White House (the executive branch) does not own the document. The Nunes memo is owned by the Legislative Branch, and specifically by the House Intelligence Committee. The Executive Branch can request the memo, but they cannot demand it without following a process. Therefore, without submission, the executive branch cannot declassify it. There is an inherent constitutional separation of power.

Secondly, while it might seem like a good idea for President Trump to declassify the Nunes memo, if given by the Intel Committee, it would not be prudent to do so. Within this classified document Donald Trump is the subject of adverse action outlined therein.

The President was the target of the unlawful action by the DOJ and FBI as reportedly outlined within the Nunes memo. Because the memo contains details of FBI and DOJ surveillance, Donald Trump (now POTUS) is both the victim and the head of law enforcement in charge of investigation the illegal action that created the victim.

In addition to being both the victim and charged with the legal authority over the FBI and DOJ, there are downstream ramifications due to Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating President Trump for “Obstruction of Justice”.

White House lawyer Don McGahn would clearly instruct Trump (victim) to stay the hell away from this investigation. There is an inherent conflict. Any exceptional action taken by POTUS could be construed as interference, including violations of the separation of powers.

Therefore the best route as constructed by Nunes and Goodlatte would be for the House to vote to declassify, pass on to the Executive for review, then President Trump grants approval for the request of the House (legislative branch).

By law, all attempts by the legislative branch to declassify intelligence information must be given to the executive branch for review in advance of release. This is because the executive branch needs to see if any current intelligence operations might be compromised by information not known to the legislative branch.

The National Security Council and any impacted offices of the intelligence information (CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, U.S. DoS, DOD, etc.) review, provide opinion, and sign off prior to executive approval and release.

It is not just this declassification that goes through this process, all declassification goes through this process. In this example, presumably, the President has no adverse reason to block the declassification request and it is likely all approvals will happen quite quickly.

After the White House approves of the HPSCI request, the Memo then becomes public.

That’s when Democrats will attack the memo as being authored and misrepresented by