House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tore into House Republicans Monday for veering into "cover-up" territory after the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee voted to release a controversial memo allegedly detailing abuses of surveillance powers by the intelligence community committed against a Trump campaign associate.

"They have crossed from dangerously and recklessly dealing with intelligence to a cover-up of an investigation that they don't want the American people to see come to fruition, and that is most unfortunate," Pelosi told CNN's Chris Cuomo Monday, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.



Pelosi's accusations of a cover-up are based on reports that the memo outlines how the Justice Department and FBI “failed to adequately explain” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that they initially wanted a warrant to gather information on former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, in part, because of the contents of the unverified Trump dossier.

The dossier was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn was paid by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Pelosi added she was making the assertions after not only seeing the classified Republican memo, but also its source material.

When pressed by Cuomo on what the documents revealed, she said the GOP was pushing "a total misrepresentation" of the facts.

"They're deadly afraid of the Russia investigation," Pelosi said. "We don't want the investigation to be anything but based on the law and the facts and let the investigation proceed. That's the right thing to do for our country. We have to be respectful of law. We have to be respectful of intelligence and the rest."

The House Intelligence Committee on Monday voted to invoke an obscure congressional rule so the four-page memo could be made public. It also voted not to immediately publicize a memo by Democrats on the committee rebutting the Republican document, instead following regular process by opening it up to members of Congress first.