Trump backs release of memo alleging FBI’s power abuse
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump is set to approve the release of an explosive memo alleging abuse of power in the FBI’s probe of his election campaign, a White House official said Thursday.
Rejecting entreaties from the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation to block the document on the grounds it could expose top secret counterintelligence data, the official told AFP the president’s green light would likely come on Friday.
“The president is OK with it. I doubt there will be any redactions. It’s in Congress’s hands after that,” the official said.
The four-page memo was written by Republican lawmaker Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and purports to show the Justice Department and the FBI as deeply politicised, anti-Trump agencies.
Its release would amount to an outright rejection of the FBI’s extraordinary warning Tuesday that it had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
Democrats and critics in the
The president is OK with it. I doubt there will be any redactions. It’s in Congress’s hands after that. Unnamed White House official
intelligence community say the release is a stunt aimed at casting doubt on the independence of the Justice Department and FBI, using very selective information that cannot be countered publicly without revealing more secrets about government counterintelligence operations.
They say the ultimate goal of Nunes, with Trump’s support, is to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which has edged closer to the president himself.
Nunes “seeks to release a conspiracy-themed memo that selectively cherry-picks classified information intended to discredit the past work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and ultimately Special Counsel Mueller,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. —