Dems’ rebuttal memo gets OK
Panel to make public response to GOP claims of FBI abuse of power
WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously Monday to make public a classified Democratic memorandum rebutting Republican claims that the FBI and the Justice Department had abused their powers to wiretap a former Trump campaign official, setting up a possible clash with President Donald Trump.
The vote gives Trump five days to review the Democratic memo and determine whether he will try to block its release. A decision to stop it could lead to an ugly standoff between the president, his top law enforcement and intelligence advisers and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Trump vocally supported the release of the Republicans’ memo last week, declassifying its contents on Friday over the objections of Democrats and his own FBI, which issued a rare public statement to warn that it had “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy. On Saturday, he claimed, incorrectly, that the memo “totally vindicates” him in the continuing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
The 10-page Democratic document is certain to be less flattering to his case. Democrats have said the memo corrects mischaracterizations by the Republicans and adds crucial context to actions by the FBI and the Justice Department in obtaining a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to wiretap the former Trump aide, Carter Page, in October 2016.
A White House official said on Monday that it was prepared to review the memo.
But the memo’s fate is uncertain. Trump signaled earlier on Monday that he had little goodwill toward the committee’s Democrats, launching a broadside at Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, its top Democrat. Trump accused Schiff on Twitter of illegally leaking confidential information from the committee, called the congressman “Little Adam Schiff ” and ominously said that he “must be stopped.”
In a separate tweet later in the morning, Trump praised Rep. Devin Nunes of California, who spearheaded the Republican memo as the committee chairman, calling him a “Great American Hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure.”
Nunes’ 3½-page memo centered on the FBI’s use of material from a former British spy, Christopher Steele, in the warrant application to spy on Page. Steele was researching possible connections between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates, but the memo said that the FBI had not disclosed to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that he was being paid by the Democratic National Committee and lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Democrats have denounced the document as a tactic to undermine the investigation and to protect Trump, and they have said it is riddled with errors and omissions.
Specifically, the Democratic memo is said to contend that the FBI was more forthcoming with the surveillance court than Republicans had claimed.
The document also is said to contest Republican claims that Andrew G. McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI at the time, had testified before the Intelligence Committee late last year that the agency would not have sought a wiretap of Page without Steele’s dossier of information.
The New York Times filed a motion on Monday asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to unseal all materials related to the wiretap of Page, including the FBI’s application for the warrant and other court documents. Since Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, no such wiretapping application materials have been made public.