POLITICS
01/31/2018 12:43 pm ET Updated 1 hour ago

FBI Has ‘Grave Concerns’ On Republican-Authored FISA Memo Trump Wants Released

The bureau says the memo Republicans have used to undermine Mueller has “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

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WASHINGTON ― The FBI has “grave concerns” about a secretive Republican-authored memo that members of Congress have been using to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference with the 2016 election.
In an extraordinary public statement on Wednesday, the bureau said the classified four-page memo authored by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee had “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
In a party-line vote, the House Intelligence Committee used a rarely invoked procedure to approve the release of the memo, which is based on classified documents the Justice Department provided to the committee. The memo reportedly alleges that the Justice Department and the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Carter Page, who was associated with the Trump campaign, ahead of the 2016 election.
Actual FISA experts have treated that claim with extreme skepticism.
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
President Donald Trump onstage with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray as he participates in a graduation ceremony at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, on Dec. 15, 2017.
President Donald Trump has indicated he supports the memo being made public, telling a House Republican after the State of the Union address that he would “100 percent” release it. Trump’s statement was at odds with the position of his own White House, which had insisted an actual review process was in place. 
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday urged his colleagues not to use the memo to undermine the Mueller probe, calling it “a completely separate matter.” His statement was a bit late ― Republicans and Fox News anchors had been using the mysterious memo to suggest it was time to fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight of the special counsel investigation.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and the man chiefly responsible for the memo, issued a statement on Wednesday saying DOJ and the FBI “stonewalled” Congress for nearly a year and that they issued “spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses.”
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