The House Intelligence Committee on Monday voted unanimously to release a classified Democrat memo aimed at rebutting the Republican memo on Obama Justice Department and FBI abuse of surveillance powers.
Democrats have suggested that Republicans on the committee would not vote to release their rebuttal, but every Republican on the committee voted to do so. The Democrat memo now goes to the White House for review, and the president will have five days to object or approve its release.
The Democrat memo is ten pages — about six pages longer than the Republican memo, and is expected to lay out why the FBI had a good reason to request a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page as part of its investigation of the Trump campaign.
The White House has indicated it will work with Democrats to release their memo. Last week, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement, “The Administration stands ready to work with Congress to accommodate oversight requests consistent with applicable standards, including the need to protect intelligence sources and methods.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Monday that a copy of the memo has already gone to the FBI and the Justice Department for review, as well.
Republicans who have seen the rebuttal say they are confident it does not change the conclusion in theirs — that senior DOJ and FBI officials used the uncorroborated dossier to get a surveillance warrant on Page without telling the court that it was funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
According to The Hill, committee member Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) told reporters that he did not think the Democrat memo was an accurate representation “for a million different reasons.”
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) told reporters on Friday that there were some “errors” in their memo, and it attempts to draw “different conclusions.”
“Having read the Democrat memo already, and I’ve gone on record to say if they’ll correct some of the errors in their memo, which was really a counter-memo to this memo, trying to spin a different narrative, it did not contradict any of the facts that are in this memo,” he said.
“So anything that you’ve read in the four pages, there is nothing in their memo that would contradict those facts,” he said, adding:
“They do attempt to draw different conclusions and say, ‘Well, this is the reason why this was done’ but … anytime that you give a tool as powerful as we have given the FISA court … it should be a very high bar, and with any prosecutor, if they are going to get a normal warrant, they are required to give all of the facts, not just the facts that they want to lay out.”