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.
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.
Thats when Democrats will attack the memo as being authored and misrepresented by
Ah. So you don’t want it released, it’s a beer weapon unreleased than released.
Sorry. Auto correct changed better to beer. Should have been a better weapon.
Does this mean that congress can release the memo since they own it without Presidential approval?