The House Intelligence Committee could vote Monday to release a classified memo detailing FBI abuse in its investigation of the Trump campaign.
The committee meets 5:00 p.m. on Monday and could vote to release the memo, according to a report by the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. A source confirmed to Breitbart News it is “possible.”
A majority on the committee would make the decision about the release. As there are 13 Republicans and nine Democrats on the committee, it is likely to vote to release the memo.
All Republicans on the committee voted this month to make the memo viewable by all members of the House and are expected to vote to release it to the public. All Democrats on the committee voted against making the memo viewable to members of the House and will likely vote against making it public.
If the committee votes to release the memo to the public, President Trump will have five days to object, placing the memo’s possible release sometime within the next two weeks.
The memo cites classified documentation that resides with the Justice Department, and it will be up to the president to release that intelligence as well. The White House has not weighed in yet on whether that would happen.
Democrats have already begun pushing back against the release of the memo and have drafted their own counter-memo. They will seek a committee vote to release the counter-memo to House members, according to the Washington Post.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has also pushed back against the release of the memo, warning in a letter to the committee that releasing classified information could pose a risk to national security. The letter, which was promptly leaked to the media, requested that the DOJ and the FBI review the memo first before its release.
Democrats have seized upon that leaked letter to amplify their claims that releasing the memo would be dangerous.
But submitting the memo for “review” by the DOJ has its own risks — of allowing bureaucrats at the DOJ or the FBI to bury it.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), in a speech last week on the Senate floor, said he was facing just that problem.
He said he recently submitted a memo that he wanted to make public to the DOJ and the FBI to review, and the FBI is now “falsely” claiming it contains classified information and cannot be released.
He stated that he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) came across “significant discrepancies” between what Trump dossier author Christopher Steele said under oath as part of a libel suit and what he said in other classified documents they viewed, which prompted them to refer Steele for a criminal investigation.
Grassley also said they sent the DOJ and the FBI a memo detailing the discrepancy intended for release to the public but that the FBI is arguing that it contains classified information and cannot be released.
“It sure looks like a bureaucratic game of hide the ball, rather than a genuine concern about national security,” he said. “The American people deserve the truth.”
He called on the House memo to be released. Watch Grassley’s speech here: