White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday there are “no current plans” within the Trump administration to release a contentious memo that allegedly accuses the Justice Department and FBI officials of abusing power.
“Contrary to a published report, there are no current plans to release the House Intelligence Committee’s memo,” Sanders said in a statement. “The President has not seen or been briefed on the memo or reviewed its contents.”
Republican members of the House Intelligence panel voted Monday night to release the memo pending approval by President Trump, who has privately fumed to aides about its rumored contents.
Compiled by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the memo is said to detail instances of overt anti-Trump bias at the nation’s top law enforcement agency and a situation in which FBI agents abused their power by requesting a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Most Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have advocated for the memo to be declassified, suggesting Americans deserve such transparency. Others, however, have said releasing it would come with severe national security risks.
“Sadly, we expect that the president of the United States will not put the national interest over his own personal interest,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Monday, suggesting that Trump is likely to approve its release.
The president, who is set to deliver his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, has five days to determine whether to make the memo public.
A Republican strategist named Michael Morrison erroneously reported on Tuesday afternoon that Trump had “ordered the release of the memo after his… speech.”
