House Intelligence Committee Democrats pushed back Wednesday against Republicans’ plan to release a controversial classified memo about alleged Justice Department surveillance abuses – by crafting their own version of events and pressing for its simultaneous publication.
Ranking committee Democrat Adam Schiff of California said in a statement that the GOP’s sensationalized memo was an attempt to ‘selectively and misleadingly characterize classified information in an effort to protect the President at any cost.’
Transparency proponents – and a variety of Russian-run automated Twitter accounts – rallied last week with the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo.
One of its conclusions, according to aides to two Republicans who have seen the memo, is that the DOJ and FBI used the infamous ‘dirty dossier’ of opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump to justify some portions of court requests for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.
Those warrants, the Capitol Hill staffers say, were the basis for the surveillance of unspecified people tied to Trump’s campaign.
House Intelligence Committee Republicans led by chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (right) have circulated a controversial memo about Justice Department and FBI abuses of surveillance warrants, and now Democrats on the committee, led by Rep. Adam Schiff (left), say they have their version of events
President Donald Trump vented early in his presidency that he was wiretapped at Trump Tower during the campaign, a claim that would be more plausible if scattered Republicans’ claims are accurate
The so-far unsubstantiated anti-Trump dossier includes a claim that Trump was vulnerable to blackmail because the Kremlin had video of him frolicking with prostitutes in Moscow.
The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid for the dossier’s research and preparation, using a law firm as a go-between for a contract with an investigative research firm called Fusion GPS.
The former British spy who gathered the dossier’s raw intelligence from his Russian contacts ultimately contacted the FBI. The Republican memo is, in part, a distillation of what federal law enforcement did with it, according to Capitol Hill sources.
One of Fusion GPS’s employees is married to Bruce Ohr, who was then a senior Justice Department official. Ohr was later reprimanded and reassigned after the DOJ determined that he had met with the firm’s co-founder and the spy.
So far about 200 members of Congress have looked at the GOP memo or received briefings about what it contains, but House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, a California Republican could spearhead a vote there to declassify it.
An opposition research firm hired former British spy Christopher Steele (pictured) to compile a dossier of anti-Trump dirt in 2016, and Republicans fear the result was used illegally to get wiretaps on Trump campaign officials
Republican members of Congress like Jim Jordan of Ohio are demanding the public release of the memo
That would trigger a five-day period in which the White House could either concur or block its release.
Schiff said Wednesday that the Democrats’ memo will face a vote next Monday on whether the full House of Representatives should be permitted to see it, ‘so that members of the House are not left with an erroneous impression of the dedicated professionals at the FBI and DOJ.’
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that the administration favors ‘full transparency,’ but wouldn’t say whether the president wants the Republicans’ memo made public.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said that ‘if we get this memo into the public square, heads are going to roll at the FBI and the Department of Justice. There is no way everyone keeps their job’
Iowa Rep. Steve King called the scandal ‘worse than Watergate’ in a tweet
National security journalist and Fox News contributor Sara Carter reported last week that the GOP document shows ‘extensive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse.’
Carter quoted an unnamed government official who said that ‘some of these people should no longer be in the government.’
Rep. Ron DeSantis suggested Friday on Fox News that the memo describes abuses of FISA related to the salacious anti-Trump dossier.
Asked if it was used by Obama administration officials to spy on Trump officials, DeSantis said: ‘I think that’s one of the central issues in the memo and I definitely want all Americans to be able to read what actually happened in that respect.’
Other Republicans told Fox News that the alarming memo should be mad public immediately.
‘It is so alarming the American people have to see this,’ Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said.
‘It’s troubling. It is shocking,’ added North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows.
‘Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.’
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said last week on the ‘Hannity’ program that ‘people will go to jail’ at the Justice Department and the FBI when details of Obama’s FISA abuses are made public.
‘If we get this memo into the public square, heads are going to roll at the FBI and the Department of Justice. There is no way everyone keeps their job,’ he said.
A long line of GOP members are seen the memo but have to view it in a secure, classified room in the basement of the Capitol