Story highlights The Democrats' memo hits House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes

The document is a rebuttal to a Nunes' own memo on alleged FISA abuses

Washington (CNN) As President Donald Trump weighs when to release a Republican congressional memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools, Democrats on Capitol Hill have prepared their own memo as a counterpunch that also hits House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, produced the 10-page document as a rebuttal to the Republican memo on alleged FISA abuses that the House panel voted to make public on Monday.

But the Democratic memo also goes after Nunes, a California Republican who has been at the center of the committee's criticism of the FBI and Justice Department's handling of the opposition research dossier on then-candidate Trump and Russia, according to four Republican and Democratic sources who have read the document.

Schiff's memo charges that the Nunes memo is an attempt to help the White House with the Russia investigation. The Nunes memo alleges that the FBI failed to provide information to the FISA court when using the dossier as part of an effort to obtain a surveillance warrant for former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, including that the dossier written by ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele was bankrolled in part by Democrats.

The Schiff memo argues that in fact proper procedures were followed in obtaining FISA warrants. CNN has reported that the FBI used information beyond the dossier to support the court application , and the dossier was cited in footnotes to specific allegations, according to current and former US officials briefed on the matter.

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