The FBI on Wednesday expressed “grave concerns” about the public release of a Republican-drafted memo that reportedly contains allegations of FBI partisanship and surveillance abuses, a rare display of public displeasure from the usually taciturn agency.
“With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, said in a statement. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
The memo, a product of the House Intelligence Committee, reportedly alleges that the FBI relied on an unreliable source, the infamous Steele dossier, when pursuing a warrant in a secret FISA court that would eventually metastasize into the Russia investigation. Republicans on House Intelligence voted Monday to declassify the document and release it to the public, then blocked the release of a corresponding memo Intelligence Democrats had written disputing their memo’s allegations.
Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence, on Wednesday called the Republican memo “a misleading narrative that the chairman wants to put out to undermine the FBI and [special counsel] Robert Mueller.”
The White House has the authority for three more days to block the memo’s release, but such a move is highly unlikely. After his State of the Union Tuesday night, President Trump was overheard telling a Republican congressman he would “100 percent” let the memo go public. Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly echoed the sentiment Wednesday morning.
“It’ll be released here pretty quick I think, and the whole world can see it,” Kelly said.
