The News (New Glasgow)

‘Grave concerns’

Trump nears decision on releasing GOP Russia memo

- BY MARY CLARE JALONICK, ZEKE MILLER AND CHAD DAY

President Donald Trump is close to making a decision on whether to release a classified Republican memo alleging misconduct by the FBI in its investigat­ion into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. Democrats and the Justice Department have urged him to block the document’s disclosure.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said he expected a decision to be made “pretty soon” on whether to halt the House intelligen­ce committee from releasing the memo. The panel voted along party lines Monday to release it and Trump now has five days to object. If he doesn’t object, Congress can release it.

The president has read and been briefed on the memo, according to a senior administra­tion official. The official was not authorized to be quoted about private deliberati­ons and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump was expected to approve the release of the memo as soon as Thursday.

Trump has said he wants the memo released despite the objections of the FBI and the Justice Department. The FBI declared Wednesday that it has “grave concerns” about the accuracy of the classified memo, which was written as part of an effort to reveal what Republican­s say are surveillan­ce abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department in the early stages of the investigat­ion into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidenti­al campaign.

Senior FBI officials have also made direct appeals to the White House, warning that it could set a dangerous precedent.

Democrats made a last-ditch effort Wednesday evening to stop the memo’s release, saying it had been “secretly altered” by the Republican­s who wrote it. California Rep. Adam Schiff said in a letter to House Intelligen­ce Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., that committee Democrats had discovered changes that were made after the Monday vote.

“The White House has therefore been reviewing a document since Monday night that the committee never approved for public release,” Schiff said in the letter.

Schiff asked Nunes for another vote on the memo but Republican­s didn’t appear to waver. A spokesman for Nunes said the committee vote was “procedural­ly sound,” and that “to suggest otherwise is a bizarre distractio­n from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves.”

The FBI’s stance means that Trump, by allowing the memo’s release, would be openly defying his own FBI director by continuing to push for its disclosure. It also suggests a clear willingnes­s by FBI director Christophe­r Wray, who in the early stretch of his tenure has been notably low-key, to challenge a president who just months ago fired his predecesso­r, James Comey.

The FBI statement came the day after Trump was overheard by television cameras telling a congressma­n that he “100 per cent” supported release of the four-page memo.

 ?? AP PHOTO ?? President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House during a meeting with American workers on the impact of the tax reform bill.
AP PHOTO President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House during a meeting with American workers on the impact of the tax reform bill.

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