House intelligence panel OKs release memo’s rebuttal

Top Democrat believes White House feels pressure

WASHINGTON - The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday night to release Democrats’ rebuttal to a controversial Republican memo alleging that the FBI and Department of Justice abused their power to conduct surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Democrats have been anxious to formally refute the four-page GOP memo, which was written by the committee’s Republican staff at the direction of Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and released Friday after President Trump signed off on it. Democrats want to release their own 10-page memo to dispute the GOP document.

With Monday’s unanimous vote to publicly release the Democrats’ memo, it will be sent to the White House for review, just as the Nunes memo was last week. Trump and his advisers will have five days to review it and decide whether to block its release. The president approved release of the Nunes memo over the strong objections of the FBI.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said Monday that if the committee sends the Democratic memo to the White House, officials “will consider it along the same lines” as they did the Nunes memo.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the committee’s senior Democrat, said Monday that he believes the White House will feel pressure to release the Democrats’ memo after touting the need for “transparency” in making the Nunes memo public.

However, Schiff said he’s concerned that White House advisers may try to black-out part of the Democrats’ memo for political reasons and falsely claim that they are doing it to protect classified information. Democrats have already sent their memo to the FBI and Justice Department for review, and no redactions have been requested yet from those agencies, Schiff said.

“We think this (Democratic memo) will help inform the public of the many distortions and inaccuracies in the majority (Republican) memo,” Schiff told reporters after the vote. “We think this will be very useful for the American people to see.”

Nunes declined to comment after the closed-door meeting.

Mueller is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump as he sought to limit the probe.

The House and Senate intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have been conducting their own Russia probes, although only the Senate Intelligence Committee has managed to remain bipartisan.

The Nunes memo alleges that top law enforcement officials relied on an unsubstantiated dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of Page, who had served on the campaign’s foreign policy advisory team.

The dossier was part of opposition research funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to look into Trump’s ties to Russia. The Nunes memo alleges that the FBI knew of the partisan agenda behind the dossier but did not tell the surveillance court.