House Intel Dems have drafted separate memo countering GOP claims

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat announced Wednesday that the committee had drafted a memo to counter the claims of Republicans on the panel that law enforcement officials are biased against the Trump administration.

Top Republicans on the committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.), have sought the release of a classified memo compiled by Nunes’s staff saying the FBI and Justice Department abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s wiretapping provisions. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the panel’s ranking member, said Democrats had to draft their own memo “setting out the relevant facts and exposing the misleading character of the Republicans’ document” and to clear the air. 

Schiff said he and his colleagues on Monday “will move that this new memorandum be made available to the full House in our classified spaces.”

He called the Republican memo “another effort to distract from the Russia probe and undermine the special counsel.” 

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Republicans have pushed for the four-page document’s release to the public to prove the FBI has bias against President Trump, while Democrats have dismissed the memo as a conspiracy and an effort to distract from the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. 

In his statement, Schiff mentioned an effort by conservative lawmakers to urge Trump to support the release of the “spin memo” on Tuesday, in an apparent attempt to badger the committee to release it. 

“With this latest gambit, the majority seeks to selectively and misleadingly characterize classified information in an effort to protect the President at any cost,” Schiff said.

Updated: 5:39 p.m.