As White House lawyers pored over a memo on Wednesday that contains allegations of government surveillance abuse, they may well have been preparing to do battle with the agency investigating President Trump over alleged Russian collusion.
The FBI said Wednesday that it has "grave concerns" about releasing the Republican-authored memo, which the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines this week to release. FBI Director Christopher Wray viewed the document Sunday on Capitol Hill, one day before the committee's vote sent the memo to the White House for further review, and reportedly visited the White House on Monday in an effort to persuade Trump's aides not to approve the memo's release.
Meanwhile, Democrats claimed on Wednesday evening that Republicans on the intelligence panel had significantly altered the document after voting for its publication but before sending it to the White House for review, creating uncertainty about whether the White House can or should make public the disputed claims of surveillance abuse in the memo. The FBI has said the memo omits information that would provide more context to the reported allegation that Justice Department officials improperly renewed a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
But Republicans argued that the edits to the document were grammatical fixes and changes requested by the FBI, as well as committee Democrats themselves, therefore the vote to release it was "procedurally sound." Trump suggested Tuesday that he was "100 percent" confident that the White House would make the controversial memo public.
Chief of staff John Kelly predicted Wednesday that the administration would be "pretty quick" to release the memo, setting the White House up for another potential showdown with the Justice Department over something related to the Russia investigation.
Get the Exclusive
01.23.2025