The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is calling on the panel’s Republican chairman to halt the process of releasing a memo alleging that the Trump campaign was a victim of surveillance abuses, shortly before the document’s expected public release.
California congressman Adam Schiff said Wednesday night that the committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, had “secretly altered” the memo that was sent to the White House for review after the committee voted Monday to release the classified, four-page document. Committee Democrats voted against the release, saying that the memo is filled with “factual inaccuracies” and meant to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller.
“This evening, the Committee Minority discovered that the classified memorandum shared by the Committee Majority with the White House is not, in fact, the same document that Members of the House of Representatives have been reviewing since January 18,” Schiff said in a letter to Nunes on Wednesday evening.
“This is deeply troubling, because it means that the Committee Majority transmitted to the White House an altered version of its classified document that is materially different than the version on which the Committee voted,” Schiff continued. “The White House has therefore been reviewing a document since Monday night that the Committee never approved for public release.”
Schiff called the changes “substantive” but a House Intelligence Committee spokesman disputed Schiff’s characterization of the changes to the memo.
“The Committee Minority is now complaining about minor edits to the memo, including grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves,” the spokesman said, and described the vote to release the document as “absolutely procedurally sound.”
“To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves,” the spokesman said.
In his letter Wednesday, Schiff said that the document sent to the Trump administration is different than the one House members have reviewed, and different than the document that the committee voted on on Monday. On that basis, he called for the memo to be withdrawn from White House review.
“Because there were material changes made to the document unbeknownst to Committee Members and only revealed to us this evening, two days after the vote, there is no longer a valid basis for the White House to review the altered document,” Schiff said. “This new version is not the same document shared with the entire House and on which Committee Members voted.”
Committee members were “were never apprised of, never had the opportunity to review, and never approved” of the changes, Schiff said.
“The fact that the Majority found it necessary to make these changes without informing the Committee during the vote signifies that the Committee Majority no longer stands by the representation it has made to House Members in its original document and felt it necessary to deceive Committee Members during Monday’s vote, by withholding the fact that it planned to send a different document to the White House,” he said.
“If the Majority remains intent on releasing its document to the public, despite repeated warnings from DOJ and the FBI, it must hold a new vote to release to the public its modified document,” Schiff concluded.
The GOP memo can be released if the president doesn’t object within the five days after the Monday vote. Trump was caught on camera Tuesday night telling a House member that he would “100 percent” allow for the memo to be released publicly. Top intelligence and law enforcement officials have urged the president to withhold the memo from the public.
The FBI and some at the DOJ have responded negatively to the memo. FBI director Christopher Wray said in a statement Wednesday that the bureau has “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Assistant attorney general Stephen Boyd also wrote to House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes last week telling him it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release the memo without DOJ and FBI vetting.
Reports indicate that the GOP-drafted memo addresses federal officials’ use of information from ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose work compiling a controversial dossier was financed by Democrats, in obtaining a warrant to surveil former Trump adviser Carter Page.
Schiff in the last line of his letter suggested that the GOP-drafted memo and the Democratic counter-memo could now be released together: “This can be done at the business meeting on Monday, February 5, 2018 when we will move, once again, to release the Minority’s responsive memorandum, which House Members have now had the opportunity to read.”
The question of jointly releasing the GOP memo and Democratic counter-memo proved contentious Monday. The GOP majority agreed then to release that document to the full House for members to view but voted against releasing it to the public, saying that the Democrats’ memo should go through the same process as theirs did, with some time for House review.
“I would prefer to travel a similar path we have given with the majority report, and that is, allow those members who choose to come down here to read it,” said Texas congressman Mike Conaway. “We get about a week-plus to reflect on it and to scrub it.”
