House Intelligence panel votes to release Democrats' rebuttal of Nunes memo

Erin Kelly | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption House panel votes to release Democratic memo The House intelligence committee has voted to release a Democratic rebuttal to a GOP memo on the Russia investigation. (Feb. 5)

WASHINGTON – The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday night to release Democrats' rebuttal to a controversial Republican memo alleging that the FBI and Department of Justice abused their power to conduct surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Democrats have been eager to formally refute the four-page GOP memo, which was written by the committee's Republican staff at the direction of Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and released Friday after President Trump signed off on it. Democrats want to release their own 10-page memo to dispute the GOP document.

With Monday's unanimous vote to publicly release the Democrats' memo, it will be sent to the White House for review, just as the Nunes memo was last week. Trump and his advisers will have five days to review it and decide whether to block its release. The president approved release of the Nunes memo over the strong objections of the FBI.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said Monday that if the committee sends the Democratic memo to the White House, officials "will consider it along the same lines" as they did the Nunes memo.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the committee's senior Democrat, said Monday that he believes the White House will feel pressure to release the Democrats' memo after touting the need for "transparency" in making the Nunes memo public.

However, Schiff said he's concerned that White House advisers may try to black-out part of the Democrats' memo for political reasons and falsely claim that they are doing it to protect classified information. Democrats have already sent their memo to the FBI and Justice Department for review, and no redactions have been requested yet from those agencies, Schiff said.

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"We think this (Democratic memo) will help inform the public of the many distortions and inaccuracies in the majority (Republican) memo," Schiff told reporters after the vote. "We think this will be very useful for the American people to see."

Nunes declined to comment after the closed-door meeting.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote a letter to Trump on Sunday telling the president that if he does not release the Democrats' memo, it "will confirm the American people’s worst fears that the release of Chairman Nunes’ memo was only intended to undermine Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation."

"I believe it is a matter of fundamental fairness that the American people be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgments," Schumer wrote.

Mueller is investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians, and whether the president obstructed justice by seeking to limit the probe.

The House and Senate intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have been conducting their own Russia investigations, although only the Senate Intelligence Committee has managed to remain bipartisan.

The Nunes memo alleges that top law enforcement officials relied on an unsubstantiated dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of Page, who had served on the campaign's foreign policy advisory team.

The dossier was part of opposition research funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to look into Trump's ties to Russia. The Nunes memo alleges that the FBI knew of the partisan agenda behind the dossier but did not tell the surveillance court.

Democrats say the dossier was not the only evidence that FBI and Department of Justice officials used to obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Page. And they say that federal officials told the court that the dossier was compiled for political purposes.

"The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process," Schiff said last week. "As the (Democrats) memo makes clear, none of this is true."

Schiff said the FBI had good reason to be worried about Page's contacts to Russia.

The FBI’s interest in Page and his possible ties to Russia date back to 2013, when federal investigators were concerned that Page had been targeted by Russian intelligence agents for recruitment. That case came three years before the 2016 surveillance order described in the Nunes memo.

Democrats say the GOP memo contradicts its own premise that the Russia investigation began with Page and the dossier. As noted in the Nunes memo, the FBI began a counterterrorism investigation of former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos in late July 2016 — about three months before federal investigators first sought the warrant on Page on Oct 21. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last fall to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians and is cooperating with Mueller's investigation.

After the Nunes' memo was released, Trump immediately declared on Twitter that it was evidence that he had been vindicated in the Russia investigation.

"This memo totally vindicates 'Trump' in probe," the president tweeted Saturday. "But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on."

On Monday he added in tweets that Nunes is a hero, while Schiff is a "liar" and a "leaker."

Representative Devin Nunes, a man of tremendous courage and grit, may someday be recognized as a Great American Hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and some other prominent Republicans in Congress say the Nunes memo is separate from the Mueller investigation and should not be seen as an attempt to undermine Mueller.

"Well I'm actually in a really small group of Republicans that think that this FISA process is suspect and wrong and should not have taken place, but you still have a Russia investigation even without it," said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday.

Gowdy said there still needs to be an investigation of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian attorney and others promising "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

"Russia tried to interfere with our election in 2016, with or without a dossier," said Gowdy, who is a member of the House intelligence panel and helped advise staff on the writing of the GOP memo. "So you need an investigation into Russia."

Schiff said after Monday's vote that "there is a rising sense of panic clearly at the White House and as well on the Hill (among Republicans)" about Mueller's investigation.

Nunes memo: FBI, Justice Department abused surveillance The controversial Nunes memo is out. It claims the FBI and the Justice Department abused their surveillance authority on Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign. Democrats say the memo is misleading.

Contributing: David Jackson, Kevin Johnson