QUOTE OF THE DAY

Document said to depict agency surveillance abuse

“We’re going to have to compromise unless we elect more Republicans.”

President Donald Trump, acknowledging the stakes in this year’s midterm elections and the more immediate uphill battle GOP lawmakers face in reaching an immigration deal

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump cleared the way Thursday for the release of a secret memo written by Republican congressional staff members and said to accuse federal law enforcement officials investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election of abusing their surveillance authorities.

Trump, who had a brief window to block the memo’s disclosure on national security grounds, was expected to tell Congress today that he had no objections and likely would not request that any material be redacted, White House officials said Thursday. It would then be up to the House Intelligence Committee, whose Republican leaders have pushed for its release, to make the document public.

The officials were not authorized to be quoted about private deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The president’s decision came despite a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who say that releasing the document would jeopardize sensitive government information, including how intelligence is gathered, and from Democrats who say it is politically motivated and distorts the actions of the Justice Department and the FBI by omitting crucial context.

But Trump wants the memo out. He has told people close to him that he believes it makes the case that law enforcement officials acted inappropriately in seeking the highly classified warrant on one of his campaign advisers, Carter Page.

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday defended the memo and its primary author, Rep. Devin Nunes,

R-Calif., saying the document was not an attack on institutions and was not meant to undermine the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his Russia investigation.

“This memo is not an indictment of the FBI or the Department of Justice; it does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general,” he said, referring to Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller in May.

But Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the opposite Thursday, asserting that Trump is looking for a reason to fire Mueller and Rosenstein. He said he’s more worried about Rosenstein because he decides the scope of Mueller’s investigation.

“The White House knows it would face a firestorm if it fired Bob Mueller,” Schiff said. “What’s more effective is to fire Bob Mueller’s boss.”

There is concern about Rosenstein’s future among current and former law enforcement officials, too. Rosenstein is named in the Republican memo, according to people familiar with it, because he approved the request early last year to reauthorize the surveillance of Page.

The president has expressed a desire to get rid of Rosenstein, which would allow him to appoint a new official to oversee Mueller, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

People familiar with the 3½-half page Republican memo say it contends that officials from the FBI and the

Justice Department may have misled a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge when they sought a warrant to spy on Page in October 2016.

The people say the officials relied on information provided by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, without adequately explaining to the judge that Democrats had financed his research.

Still, even some Senate Republicans have urged caution in releasing the memo. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 in the Senate, urged his House colleagues Thursday to slow their push.

Thune said he thought that the Senate Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., should be allowed to see the document before its release. The White House allowed officials from the nation’s intelligence agencies to review the document, but the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to see the memo was declined by House Republicans.

Thune also said House Republicans should carefully consider the FBI’s warning that it had “grave concerns” about making the memo public.

“They need to pay careful attention to what our folks who protect us have to say about what this, you know, how this bears on our national security,” Thune told reporters at the Republicans’ annual policy retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.

Thune also called for a Democratic memo rebutting the Republican document to be shown to the public at the same time.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., also questioned the release, in a joint statement with Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.

“The president’s apparent willingness to release this memo risks undermining U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts, politicizing Congress’ oversight role, and eroding confidence in our institutions of

government,” the senators said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., deflected questions about the memo, saying at a news conference with Ryan that the speaker is “doing this just right.”

The FBI strongly condemned the memo’s release in a statement Wednesday, saying the bureau had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Thomas O’Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, issued a statement Thursday supporting FBI Director Christopher Wray. It says the group appreciates his “standing shoulder to shoulder with the men and women of the FBI as we work together to protect our country from criminal and national security threats.”

Former FBI Director James Comey, whose firing by Trump last year spurred the appointment of the special counsel, tweeted Thursday evening of the FBI statement: “All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. I wish more of our leaders would. But take heart: American history shows that, in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.”

Also at issue Thursday were accusations from Democrats that the Republicans had made “material changes” to the memo after the Intelligence Committee voted to release it but before it was transmitted to the White House for review.

Schiff wrote in a letter late Wednesday that the committee needed to restart the process and vote again on the revised memo under the same never-before-used House rules that the committee invoked to vote on the release. The committee voted along party lines Monday in favor of release.

The letter started yet another round of finger-pointing among committee members, who have bitterly wrestled over the memo. Republicans quickly countered that Schiff was “complaining about minor edits” and said their vote was “absolutely procedurally sound.” However, another person familiar with the changes described them as more than cosmetic and an attempt to water down assertions made in the document.

Ryan said his understanding was that Nunes revised the memo before the committee voted to release it.

“I say, let all of it out, so long as we’re not revealing sources and methods,” Ryan said. “The more transparency the better.”

In a letter Thursday morning, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic House leader, called on Ryan to remove Nunes as the Intelligence Committee’s chairman.

“Congressman Nunes’ deliberately dishonest actions make him unfit to serve as Chairman, and he must be removed immediately from this position,” she wrote, adding, “The integrity of the House is at stake.”

Nunes gave no indication that he intended to change course.

Trump had five days from the time of the vote to review the document for national security concerns and try to block it. The president apparently made up his mind quickly, telling a Republican congressman after his State of the Union address Tuesday night that he would not stop the release.

Information for this article was contributed by Nicholas Fandos and Adam Goldman of The New

York Times; by Zeke Miller, Mary Clare Jalonick, Chad Day, Catherine Lucey, Matthew Daly, Eric Tucker and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; by Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima, Karoun Demirjian, John Wagner, Jenna Johnson, Devlin Barrett and Erica Werner of The

Washington Post; and by Jennifer Jacobs, Margaret Talev, Billy House, Justin Sink and Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg News.