Rep. Devin Nunes is furious with the the FBI and DOJ attempts to obtain the two-page document the FBI used to initiate its probe of the Trump campaign's Russia contacts | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Justice Dept. turns over document that launched Russia probe

A day after Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, threatened the impeachment of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department on Wednesday turned over the document that launched the bureau’s Russia investigation in 2016, cooling the latest confrontation between House Republicans and intelligence community leaders.

Nunes, a California Republican, had demanded an unredacted version of the document by Wednesday afternoon, and the Justice Department provided one with a few redactions that it deemed necessary for national security. Nunes praised the cooperation and said the document would aid his committee’s “ongoing investigation” of the department and the FBI.


“I’d like to thank Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein for his cooperation today,” he said.

Nunes had threatened late Tuesday to seek the impeachment of Wray and Rosenstein if they failed to meet his demands, an extraordinary escalation of tensions that underscored eroding relations between the House Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department.

“We’re not going to just hold in contempt,” Nunes said on Fox News. “We will have a plan to hold in contempt and impeach.”

Nunes has been furious with the agencies over attempts to obtain the two-page document that the FBI used to initiate its investigation of the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts. That document, which The New York Times reported on in December, revealed that the inquiry was launched because of an intelligence tip that George Papadopoulos, a campaign foreign policy aide, had revealed to an Australian diplomat indicating that Russia had obtained negative material about Hillary Clinton.

The revelation undercut claims that the investigation had been launched as a result of a disputed so-called dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy, whose work was funded indirectly by the Clinton campaign and which President Donald Trump has dismissed as fiction. A formerly classified memo released in February by the House intelligence panel, with Trump’s approval, later confirmed that the FBI began its Russia inquiry because of the information from Papadopoulos.

But Nunes says the FBI had refused to turn over an unredacted version of the Papadopoulos document, despite a subpoena and demands dating back to August. He set a new deadline for Wednesday, and told the Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the decision on contempt and impeachment would depend on whether Wray and Rosenstein met the new deadline.

A Justice Department official said the document it submitted to Congress contained just a handful of redactions intended to mask the name of a foreign country and a foreign agent.

“These words must remain redacted after determining that revealing the words could harm the national security of the American people by undermining the trust we have with this foreign nation,” the official said.

The official said that through the document, plus the provision of 1,000 pages of additional classified material, the Justice Department had “substantially satisfied Chairman Nunes’ August subpoena in an appropriate fashion.”

In his statement, Nunes noted that that subpoena remained in effect.

A move to impeach two top officials at the Justice Department — both appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate — would have been an extraordinary confrontation between Congress and federal law enforcement. Several of Nunes’ colleagues had endorsed holding Rosenstein and Wray in contempt of Congress.

Democrats contend that there was a darker element to Nunes’ aggressive posture toward Rosenstein and Wray: giving Trump a rationale for removing them.

“Chairman Nunes’ threat of contempt proceedings, and of impeachment, serves insidious purposes: to intimidate DOJ and FBI, to provide the president with a pretext to fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray, and to undermine special counsel [Robert] Mueller’s investigation,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “The chairman’s rhetoric is a shocking and irresponsible escalation of the GOP’s attacks on the FBI and DOJ.”

Schiff said the Justice Department had already shared ample information, including sensitive material connected to the Russia investigation, that Republicans subsequently released through an unprecedented process that included a move by Trump to declassify information over the FBI’s objections.

