Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an interview with POLITICO that, in his view, the less-censored version of the document doesn’t offer significant new information. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Schiff: Nothing 'new or notable' in unredacted document behind GOP-DOJ battle

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says he has reviewed the unredacted version of a document that has sparked increasingly fierce fights between congressional Republicans and the Justice Department — and he claims there’s not much in it that wasn't already known.

“Nothing particularly new or notable,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).


The two-page file, a formal record of the opening of the Russia investigation in 2016, brought the Justice Department and FBI to the brink of a ferocious clash with House Republicans. The GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, had seen redacted versions but insisted on receiving the full document by Wednesday. He threatened to pursue the impeachment of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if he didn’t get it.

Nunes had complained that previous versions of the file provided to Congress blacked out portions of potentially relevant information about how the Russia probe began.

Elements of the file, which were previously declassified, indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into contacts between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign after a Trump foreign policy aide, George Papadopoulos, suggested to an Australian diplomat that the Russians had obtained dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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Schiff said in an interview with POLITICO that, in his view, the less-censored version of the document doesn’t offer significant new information and nothing in it calls into question the FBI’s decision to open an investigation.

“I think that the FBI and the Department of Justice had good reason to begin the counterintelligence investigation,” he said, “and as we can see from what we’ve discovered since, there was far more interaction between the Trump campaign and Russians than they had any idea at the time.”

In a letter to Rosenstein and Wray last week, Nunes set a Wednesday deadline for them to hand over the unredacted document. As the deadline approached, Nunes warned on Fox News that he was prepared to take both men to task if they failed to meet his deadline.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said it would share a new version of the file that included minimal redactions to protect the identity of a foreign country and a foreign agent.

