The FBI just released a rare public statement warning against releasing the Nunes memo by Sonam Sheth on Jan 31, 2018, 2:14 PM Advertisement
 - The FBI released a statement Wednesday warning against releasing a controversial memo authored by embattled House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes.
- The confidential memo purports to show that the Department of Justice and FBI improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
- The memo has added fuel to partisan infighting, but current and former intelligence officials have largely downplayed its claims.
In an unusual move, the FBI on Wednesday released a public statement warning about the inaccuracies contained in a memo authored by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes.
The memo, which purports to show that the FBI and the Department of Justice improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, has been a hot topic of contention between Democrats and Republicans. House Republicans voted to release the document on Monday, pending President Donald Trump's approval. The FBI said in its statement that it had been provided a "limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it." The statement continued, "As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy." The statement builds on earlier reports that said top officials at the DOJ and the FBI have expressed concerns about the document's claims. Both FBI director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are opposed to releasing the memo, according to multiple media reports earlier this week. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress and the media have been pushing hard for the memo's release, claiming it shows clear proof that the nation's top law enforcement agencies are politically biased against Trump. Democrats, meanwhile, have warned against releasing the classified memo, saying that it contains several inaccuracies that paint a one-sided picture meant to distract from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Nunes began investigating the Justice Department and FBI after he traveled to the White House in March without telling his committee colleagues. There, he viewed classified information that he said showed surveillance abuses by Obama administration officials. Nunes would neither confirm nor deny at the time that he got the information from the White House. He told Bloomberg later that the information had come from a "network of whistleblowers." Nunes briefed Trump on the intelligence, which Nunes said showed that the president and his advisers may have had their communications "incidentally collected" — and their identities "unmasked" in intelligence reports — by the intelligence community after the election. The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday that Nunes also refused to say whether he worked with the White House on his memo. When Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley asked Nunes whether he had been in contact with the White House while authoring it, Nunes reportedly deflected the question several times before saying, "I'm not answering." Trump to decide whether to release the memo  Trump has three more days to decide whether to make the memo public.
In response to Rep. Jeff Duncan's plea to release the document after Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Trump replied, "Oh yeah, don't worry, 100%." On Wednesday morning, chief of staff John Kelly hinted that Trump would follow through on his promise. "[The memo] will be released here pretty quick I think and the whole world can see it," Kelly said during an interview on Fox News Radio. Referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FBI said in its statement that it "takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI. We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process." An intelligence source with knowledge of the memo told Business Insider on Wednesday that the document contained a host of inaccuracies and, if released, could negatively impact the bureau's work. "The only thing [releasing the memo] does is stoke the partisan bickering on Capitol Hill and the White House," they said, adding that "anyone who's in this field can tell that the information in this memo shouldn't be taken seriously," and would harm the FBI's ability to do its job. "This is just a debacle," said Rick Smith, a former counterintelligence agent who spent 25 years at the bureau. "I can see why [the FBI] wouldn't want it released, because you've got sources telling you stuff that's probably not true." He warned that releasing it could set a "bad precedent," adding that "the FBI is in a bind here, no matter what they do." "If they release the memo, it's going to further conspiracy theories about this, and if they don't, it'll do the same thing anyway." SEE ALSO: The FBI and Justice Department go on the offensive to convince Trump to oppose GOP memo release DON'T MISS: 'Oh yeah, don't worry. 100%': Trump gave the clearest signal yet that he'll release a controversial secret memo targeting the FBI and DOJ
| 
0 comments:
Post a Comment