House Intel Committee could hold dueling votes on releasing secret memos
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee may use an arcane House rule Monday to vote to make public a 4-page classified memo about alleged FISA surveillance abuses that targeted members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. At the same time, Democrats on the committee plan on Monday to introduce their own memorandum in an effort to rebut the majority's memo, which was authored by Chairman Devin Nunes' staff.
The majority's memo is said to contain evidence that the FBI relied on an unverified dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to wrongly secure surveillance warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Democrats on the committee say the majority's memo amounts to "Republican spin" and selectively uses classified information to undermine the work of special counsel Robert Mueller.
FBI Director Christopher Wray was able to view the GOP-authored memo over the weekend, CBS News' Paula Reid confirmed. Fox News first reported he had seen the memo.
The minority is pushing for a vote to allow all House members access to its memo, which would be classified and made viewable in the committee's secure spaces. It's not clear whether the measure will receive enough votes to proceed or whether the Republican majority will instead table the minority's document and vote to publicly release its own classified memo, which was first made accessible to all House members on January 18. A vote on releasing that memo to the public was expected this week.
Once the committee's Republicans vote on the House rule to make the contents of the majority's memo public, President Trump will have five days to object to its release.
The White House has repeatedly signaled that the president is in favor of releasing the majority's memo. On Sunday, Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said on CBS News' "Face the Nation": "We typically prefer transparency… if there are concerns, I think it would be helpful for Americans to know about it; we would be open for that being released." His remarks echoed those of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who also said last week, "We certainly support full transparency."
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told CNN's Chris Cuomo Monday that if the committee votes to release the memo, there will be a "whole national security review and look at this document," and then, the president will make a determination. Asked whether it was appropriate for the Justice Department not to play a role in the document's disclosure, Shah pointed to the Constitution.
"The constitutional process as laid out involves the House of Representatives, the House Intelligence Committee and the White house and the president," Shah said.
Apart from making the majority memo available to the entirety of House membership, the majority has so far kept a tight grip on access to it, denying the Justice Department an opportunity to review its contents. In a letter to the Intelligence Committee last week, Stephen E. Boyd, an assistant attorney general, warned that, absent an official review, releasing the memo would be "extraordinarily reckless" and posed a "risk of harm to national security and to ongoing investigations."
At least some of the details in the majority's memo are said to be based on intelligence that is so highly classified that it is considered "Gang of Eight" material, available to only a select few congressional leaders. While the dispute over publicly releasing the majority's memo is principally taking place between the committee and the Department of Justice, there may be reason for other intelligence agencies – including, potentially, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency – to be concerned about an eventual public release. Sources say some of the intelligence underlying the memo is likely to have been contributed by agencies besides the FBI, suggesting they, too, will have a stake in whether the memo or its underlying intelligence becomes public.
Asked whether they had requested access to the memo or its underlying intelligence, or whether they had a position on its release, the CIA, NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment.
Also Monday, Shah said nobody in the White House, including the president, has seen the majority's memo. If the Committee votes to make the memo public, Shah said, "We're going to have a whole national security review and look at this document and then make a determination."
Shah added that the Department of Justice "doesn't have a role in this process."