The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is expected, according to Fox News, to take a vote Monday afternoon on whether to release a classified memo that top congressional Republicans say details government surveillance abuses — and has emerged at the center of a power struggle in Washington.
Those who have seen the document suggest it reveals what role the unverified anti-Trump “dossier” played in the application for a surveillance warrant on at least one President Trump associate.
Fox News reports that the committee, with 13 Republican and nine Democratic members, is expected to vote yes.
While the White House seems to favor the memo’s release, the Justice Department has pushed back hard.
Sources told Fox News’ Catherine Herridge that FBI Director Christopher Wray went to the Capitol on Sunday to view the four-page memo.
According to one source, Wray was asked to point out inaccuracies or other issues with the wording — and said he would need “his people to take a look at it.” The source said the review is ongoing.
But various members on the panel are demanding its release:
South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, who helped write the four-page memo, said Sunday he wants it made public.
“If you … want to know whether or not the dossier was used in court proceedings, whether or not it was vetted before it was used… If you are interested in who paid for the dossier … then, yes, you’ll want the memo to come out,” Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday.”
And House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Sunday on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’.
“Having read this memo, I think it would be appropriate that the public has full view,”
California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said last week that committee Democrats will release their own memo, claiming the Republicans’ document “represents another effort to distract from the Russia probe and … seeks to selectively and misleadingly characterize classified information in an effort to protect the president at any cost.”
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