A review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s docket discloses that earlier this week the New York Times moved for the publication of all “orders authorizing surveillance of Carter Page, a United States citizen, together with the application materials and renewal application materials upon which those orders were issued.”

In its motion, the Times summarizes the controversial contents of the declassified “memorandum authored under the direction of Rep. Devin Nunes, Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concerning the surveillance of Mr. Page.”

Citing “the overwhelming public interest in assessing the accuracy of the Nunes Memorandum and knowing the actual basis for the Page surveillance orders”, the Times requests that the Court exercise its “supervisory power over its own records and files” and release the orders and applications.

This presents the Justice Department with an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, assuming the Nunes Memorandum is correct, full transparency and disclosure of the orders and applications would benefit the President. On the other hand, if the Nunes Memorandum is correct, those same materials would eliminate all doubt about the memorandum’s conclusion, i.e., that the FBI and the DOJ corrupted the FISA process to spy on the Trump campaign and administration. And this imperils past and present members of the DOJ and FBI.

This motion offers the Trump administration a lay up. The DOJ should immediately join in the motion. Whether the President and his semi-comatose Attorney General, the needlessly recused Jeff Sessions, can prevail on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the DOJ and the FBI to acquiesce in the Times’ motion is questionable. In this regard it must be recalled that Rosenstein signed the last application for an extension of the Page surveillance. Disclosure of those materials could quite possibly prove fatal to Rosenstein’s career, law license and/or liberty. And the same can be said for the other DOJ and FBI operatives who corruptly participated in presidential politics.

So, will Rosenstein, the DOJ and the FBI try to hide the facts under a national security cloak? Will they in effect protect their rears by opposing the Times motion?

For his own sake, President Trump can’t allow that to happen. If Sessions can’t get the DOJ to join in the motion, then Trump needs to replace him with someone who will.

The Times is absolutely right: all the facts need to come out.