Schiff Calls on Nunes to Withdraw FISA Memo Sent to White House

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is calling on the panel’s Republican chairman to halt the process of releasing a memo alleging that the Trump campaign was a victim of surveillance abuses, shortly before the document’s expected public release.

California congressman Adam Schiff said Wednesday night that the committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, had “secretly altered” the memo that was sent to the White House for review after the committee voted Monday to release the classified, four-page document. Committee Democrats voted against the release, saying that the memo is filled with “factual inaccuracies” and meant to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller.

“This evening, the Committee Minority discovered that the classified memorandum shared by the Committee Majority with the White House is not, in fact, the same document that Members of the House of Representatives have been reviewing since January 18,” Schiff said in a letter to Nunes on Wednesday evening.

“This is deeply troubling, because it means that the Committee Majority transmitted to the White House an altered version of its classified document that is materially different than the version on which the Committee voted,” Schiff continued. “The White House has therefore been reviewing a document since Monday night that the Committee never approved for public release.”

Schiff called the changes “substantive” but a House Intelligence Committee spokesman disputed Schiff’s characterization of the changes to the memo.