Release of the controversial memo detailing partisan bias at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and FBI “would be embarrassing to Adam Schiff [D-Calif.] once people realize the extent to which he went to keep them from learning any of this,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Tuesday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”

“My Democrat colleagues didn’t want us to find this information. They did everything they could to keep us from finding this information,” Gowdy said.

Schiff, a California Democrat, is the ranking minority member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which voted Monday to release the memo that was written at the direction of the panel’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-Calif.). President Donald Trump has five days to either approve or prevent the document’s public release.

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Gowdy, a member of the intelligence committee, said Schiff vehemently opposed the memo’s release and worked with his Democratic colleagues to do “everything they could” to prevent the American people from reading the memo for themselves.

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Gowdy said that if you’re an American interested in whether or not the salacious Trump-Russia dossier was funded by Trump’s political opponents and led to abuses of the government’s surveillance system, “then you’ll want to see the memo.”

“I mean, going to court to help Fusion GPS so we can’t find out that they paid for the dossier and that they were working for the [Democratic National Committee] — that’s a pretty big step, to go to court to try to keep the American people from learning something,” Gowdy said of Schiff’s actions.

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“So look — if it were up to Adam Schiff, you wouldn’t know about Hillary Clinton’s email, you wouldn’t know about the server, you wouldn’t know who paid for the dossier,” Gowdy continued. “So I do find it ironic that he has his own memo now, because if it were up to him we wouldn’t know any of it.”

Schiff and the Democrats on the committee offered their own counter-memo for a vote, but the GOP majority rejected it.

Gowdy said he voted to release both Nunes’ memo and the Democrats’ memo.

“But politics has denigrated to the point that it’s about winning and it’s about embarrassing the other side,” Gowdy said — adding this is why Congress has such a low approval rating.

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.