Last night, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, accused Rep. Devin Nunes of making “material changes” to his controversial FISA memo after the committee voted to release it.
Schiff said the memo delivered to President Donald Trump for review has “substantive” differences from the one voted on and thus is not approved to be released to the public.
BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release. pic.twitter.com/llhQK9L7l6
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 1, 2018
On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release Nunes’ classified memo. After the vote, congressional Republicans delivered the memo to Trump to approve its release. Schiff accused Nunes of willfully deceiving Democrats on the committee by not notifying them of his plan to alter the memo before delivering it to the president.
“It is now imperative that the Committee Majority immediately withdraw the document that it sent to the White House,” Schiff said in his letter to Nunes. “If the Majority remains intent on releasing its document to the public, despite repeated warnings from DOJ and the FBI, it must hold a new vote to release to the public its modified document.”
A spokesperson for Nunes called Schiff’s claims ridiculous, saying they fixed typos in the memo, as well as amended items requested by Democrats and the FBI, calling it a “strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo.”
Late yesterday, the FBI said they had “grave concerns” over the memo being released. It’s not clear if the FBI has reviewed the altered Nunes memo. Nunes, however, harshly rebuked the FBI.
“[It’s] clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counterintelligence investigation during an American political campaign,” he said.
Interestingly, a Democratic official told CNN that Nunes was walking back some of the memo’s major assertions.
“The changes are not cosmetic and almost all of them are unrelated to concerns about sensitive information,” the official said. “Instead, they try to water down some of the Majority’s assertions.”
The memo is currently being reviewed by the White House, although Trump was caught on camera after his State of the Union address promising to release it to the public.