The House Intelligence Committee is set to meet Monday evening amid a heated a party-line battle over a secret, GOP-drafted memo that Republicans want released publicly. A committee aide told THE WEEKLY STANDARD ahead of the meeting that a vote on releasing the memo publicly is “possible.”
Monday’s closed-door meeting comes as Democrats and Republicans on and off the committee spar over the significance of the four-page memo, which GOP lawmakers say reveals politically motivated surveillance abuses by federal officials targeting the Trump campaign. Some Republicans have suggested that the memo raises questions about special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference, which includes the nature of any ties between the Trump team and the Kremlin.
The document can be released if the committee approves the move in a vote (there are 13 Republicans and nine Democrats on the committee) and the president does not object within five days. If the president does object to its release, the question could come before the full House—but Trump is said to support the effort.
Democrats, meanwhile, describe the GOP document as misleading, riddled with factual inaccuracies, and meant to discredit Mueller’s investigation. The top Democrat on the committee, Adam Schiff, said last week that committee Democrats will move at the Monday meeting to make their secret counter-memo available to the full House.
“It has been necessary for committee Democrats to draft our own memorandum, setting out the relevant facts and exposing the misleading character of the Republicans’ document,” he said in a statement. Their Senate counterparts have also joined in opposition to the GOP memo.
Justice Department officials last week raised objections to the House publicly releasing memo without DOJ and FBI review. In a letter to House intel chairman Devin Nunes, assistant attorney general Stephen Boyd described that potential move as “extraordinarily reckless.” “We do not understand why the Committee would possibly seek to disclose classified and law enforcement sensitive information without first consulting with the relevant members of the Intelligence Community,” he wrote.
Oversight committee chairman Trey Gowdy said Sunday that he had advised Nunes to let the FBI view the memo before its release. Fox News reported Monday that FBI Director Chris Wray went to view the memo that day. As to DOJ complaints, Gowdy said last week, “to my friend Stephen Boyd, let’s lower the rhetoric. I don’t care if you see the memo.”
Republican lawmakers have been reluctant to describe the allegations contained in the secret document. But reports indicate that it addresses whether federal officials were entirely forthcoming about their use of information from ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose 2016 research was partially financed by Democrats, in obtaining a warrant for surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page.
The memo also says that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, sometimes a target of Trump’s criticism, approved an application to extend surveillance of Page, according to the New York Times.
“If you think your viewers want to know whether or not the dossier was used in court proceedings, whether or not it was vetted before it was used, whether or not it’s ever been vetted,” said Gowdy on Fox News Sunday, “if you are interested in who paid for the dossier, if you are interested in Christopher Steele’s relationship with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, then yes, you will want the memo to come out.”
