Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., is getting impatient with the FBI in his effort to root out misconduct in the early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation and went over Director Christopher Wray's head to try and move things along.

In the balance, the GOP investigator said in a letter to top Justice Department officials last week, is the American public's ability to fully understand DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's upcoming report on alleged surveillance abuses.

In the letter addressed to Attorney General William Barr and Horowitz, Meadows pushed for the unredacted release of five pages related to British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier on President Trump's ties to Russia that was used by the bureau to obtain the authority to spy on a member of his campaign, Carter Page.

Meadows cited a Freedom of Information Act legal battle over the disclosure of documents from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec that followed her meeting with Steele on Oct. 11, 2016, 10 days before the first Page warrant application was submitted. Notes taken from that meeting by Kavalec, obtained and released by conservative group Citizens United through open-records litigation, cast doubt on Steele's reliability. Kavalec wrote that during that meeting Steele admitted he was encouraged by his client, which was the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to get his research out before the November 2016 election, signaling a possible political motivation. Kavalec's notes also show she believed some of Steele's allegations were false.

The State Department told the Washington Examiner that Kavalec "completed her assignment as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs in July 2018."

Meadows said there is an email Kavalec sent to FBI official Stephen Laycock two days after her meeting with Steele, to which there was a five-page document attached that has been withheld in full due to two FOIA exemptions. But these exemptions, which are related to protecting techniques and sources and methods, are superfluous and raise concerns because the information is based on open-source media reporting, according to Meadows.

"After viewing the attachment myself, this means the FBI withheld the information from the FOIA productions so the public would not become aware they had relied on intelligence citing open-source media reporting to pursue elements of an investigation into President Trump," Meadows said.

"As such, I'm writing to encourage the FBI to provide the five-page attachment in its unredacted, unclassified form to the American people via the FOIA process," the North Carolina Republican added. "We do not need to litigate the fact open-source media publications are not intelligence sources and methods to be withheld from FOIA as the law intends. In anticipation of Inspector General Horowitz's report, the transparency awarded by the information will allow the American people to better understand full context of the investigations into President Trump."

The letter, which is not addressed to Wray, is the latest backhanded swipe at the FBI. Republican lawmakers and Trump have been openly critical of Wray, who has not always seen eye to eye with the president and his allies, including on the issue of spying. GOP investigators often vent at the Wray-led FBI over the bureau's resistance to document requests related to early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation.

In the case of Kavalec's correspondence with the FBI, sources told the Hill the five-page attachment relates to a collusion theory about a Trump Tower computer server being surreptitiously linked to Russia's Alfa Bank. The report said Kavalec downloaded a file from Steele using a commercial internet download service and sent it to Laycock via nonclassified email. This claim was boosted by liberal media and Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, behind Steele's dossier. However it has largely been discredited and former special counsel Robert Mueller said during his congressional testimony last week he believes the theory is "not true."

With Mueller's work complete, Republicans are now eagerly awaiting Horowitz's report on alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses, which is focusing on four warrants that targeted Page, an American citizen who was never charged with wrongdoing. Republicans have long noted that the dossier's Democratic benefactors and its author's anti-Trump bias were left out of the FISA applications. The FBI also did not include the assessment from the State Department.

Democrats argue that the FBI acted appropriately. A memo from House Intelligence Committee Democrats last year said the Justice Department and FBI “met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA's probable cause requirement.”

Barr has said he is working closely with Horowitz, who is expected to wrap up his inquiry this fall. As Horowitz's investigation wraps up, another one is ramping up. Barr tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and he could take prosecutorial action on any findings and recommendations from Horowitz. Also critical to that effort, Trump gave Barr “full and complete authority to declassify information" related to that inquiry.