House Intelligence Committee Votes to Release the FBI Memo

High-ranking Republican Lindsey Graham expressed reservations about making the original memo public in response.

The four-page document alleges Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department officials abused their power under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Trump has furiously denied numerous allegations, some of which have not been verified.

Page, who was a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser until September 2016, was never charged with wrongdoing.

“He had because there were false charges that he had released classified information to the White House”, Gaetz said. Devin Nunes on Friday, blasting the congressman for being “Trump’s stooge” and “doing the dirty work” of the White House. Nunes is the head of the committee but was forced to recuse himself past year after pulling a similar stunt in which he attempted to provide cover for Trump’s lie about being “wiretapped” by the Obama administration.

Schiff says Democrats on the committee voted against releasing the memo. In a letter to the committee, the department said that it would be “extremely reckless” to release the memo before it has been officially reviewed.

Noting that Peter Strzok interviewed the former secretary of state about her use of a private email server and took out language about her being “grossly negligent” from the final FBI report on the investigation, Gowdy wondered how much influence he had.

While the dispute over publicly releasing the majority’s memo is principally taking place between the committee and the Department of Justice, there may be reason for other intelligence agencies – including, potentially, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency – to be concerned about an eventual public release. Asked about the issue on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Marc Short, the White House’s head of legislative affairs, said that if the memo outlined serious concerns, “the American people should know that”.

“The Speaker has appointed someone who is totally irresponsible”, said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who labeled the move to release the GOP memo, “highly unusual” and “misleading”.

Schiff, also from California, serves as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The episode has more than a touch of Washington theater to it: Republican staffers wrote the memo, and Republican members of Congress, who always had the power to vote to release it, spent weeks calling on themselves to do so.

The emergence of the Mueller firing story troubled White House aides, who said Trump had been showing more restraint in recent months at not making pronouncements or threats that would cross risky political lines in dealing with Mueller’s probe. Democrats who read it said it was a partisan hack job. “There was an ethics investigation into that allegation, Mr. Nunes was completely cleared”.