2/2/2018
A memo produced by Republican staffers was supposed to contain proof that the FBI abused its surveillance authority while investigating the Trump Campaign ties to Russia. It didn’t.
Produced by the office of Republican Devin Nunes, the memo contained classified information and was widely criticzed for being biased and incomplete. In March of 2017, Nunes was accused of innapropriate behavior in regards to latenight meetings at the White House regarding the investigation. He later had to step down from overseeing the Russian hearings because he was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for possibly sharing classified intelligence with the White House.
The House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release the memo. Because it contains classified information, final approval to release it had to come from the President. Believing that the memo somehow inferred that he was being treated unfairly, Trump immediately released it.
Democrats blasted the memo as being incomplete, leaving out many key details so as to paint a one-sided picture. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says the memo is based on cherry-picked information presented in a “profoundly misleading” way. “Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI,” Schiff said in a press statement.
FBI Director Christopher Wray had privately warned the White House against releasing the memo. Wray was hired by Trump as a replacement to James Comey who Trump had fired. As it became clear Wednesday that Wray’s request not to release the memo would fall on deaf ears, his agency issued a two-paragraph message expressing its concerns about the document.
“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,” the statement said. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
For months, President Trump has attacked the Justice Department and the FBI saying the bureau’s reputation was “in tatters.”
A copy of the memo can be found here: Nunes Memo
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