The FBI Director is now all but a centimeter away from publically opposing the secretive Republican-authored memo that the White House is expected to release –a memo reports suggest might have been coordinated with the White House and that will come out as House GOPers have suppressed a Democratic response to it.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the White House he opposes release of a classified Republican memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The FBI came close to publicly opposing the memo’s release, saying in a statement Wednesday that it has “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
The memo on actions early in the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign is being reviewed by “our national security lawyers in the White House,” who are “slicing and dicing it,” White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said Wednesday on Fox News Radio. But he left little doubt about the outcome, saying the disputed memo will be released “pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it.”
The White House has up to five days to decide whether the memo can be released — and whether portions should be withheld — after the House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to make it public. The memo, written by aides under direction of Republican Chairman Devin Nunes, is aimed at raising questions about the validity of the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The FBI isn’t included in the inter-agency review process led by the White House aimed at deciding whether — and how much of — the memo can be made public. Wray was allowed to read the memo on Sunday.
As President Donald Trump departed the House floor after delivering his State of the Union address, C-SPAN cameras captured Representative Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, asking the president to “release the memo.”
“Oh yeah, don’t worry, 100 percent,” Trump replied, waving dismissively. “Can you imagine that? You’d be too angry.”
The FBI has “grave concerns” about a secretive Republican-authored memo that members of Congress have been using to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference with the 2016 election.
In an extraordinary public statement on Wednesday, the bureau said the classified four-page memo authored by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee had “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
In a party-line vote, the House Intelligence Committee used a rarely involved procedure to approve the release of the memo, which is based on classified documents the Justice Department provided to the committee. The memo reportedly alleges that the Justice Department and the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Carter Page, who was associated with the Trump campaign, ahead of the 2016 election.
Actual FISA experts have treated that claim with extreme skepticism.
President Donald Trump has indicated he supports the memo being made public, telling a House Republican after the State of the Union address that he would “100 percent” release it. Trump’s statement was at odds with the position of his own White House, which had insisted an actual review process was in place.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday urged his colleagues not to use the memo to undermine the Mueller probe, calling it “a completely separate matter.” His statement was a bit late ? Republicans and Fox News anchors had been using the mysterious memo to suggest it was time to fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight of the special counsel investigation.
Many analysts predict the U.S. is headed to a constitutional crisis. That’s not correct. It already is in one.
The Daily Beast:
The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee refused to answer when a colleague asked him if he had coordinated his incendiary surveillance memo with the White House, The Daily Beast has learned.
During Monday’s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump’s allies in the Russia probe.
According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn’t answer the question before finally responding, “I’m not answering.”
Spokespeople for Nunes and for the White House did not immediately respond.
Now that the committee Republicans voted to release the memo, it has been reportedly delivered to the White House. Under congressional rules, Trump has four more days to decide if he will assent to the memo’s public release.
Quigley’s question harkened back to Nunes’ history of surreptitiously working with the White House to deflect from the myriad inquiries into possible coordination between Trump’s associates and the Kremlin.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.