President Donald Trump has offered his reassurance to a GOP lawmaker that he supports the release of a classified Republican memo that claims the FBI improperly used a surveillance program, The Hill informs.
“Oh yeah, don’t worry, 100 percent,” Trump told Representative Jeff Duncan, who urged Trump as he was heading out of the House chamber to “release the memo.”
The controversial memo drafted by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes alleges “shocking” surveillance abuses by the Justice Department, according to the GOP lawmakers.
The memo is believed to contain claims of the FBI improperly observing Trump campaign communications.
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee voted this week to make the memo public. They also did not approve of publicly releasing a countermemo from Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the panel, but said that they agree to distribute it among the House members.
Republican members of the committee said on Tuesday that they are working on a transcript of the closed-door vote and will release it when it’s completed.
CBS News reported on Tuesday that representatives from the FBI, Department of Justice, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are analyzing it. Under a House rule Republicans used to overturn the classification of the four-page memo, Trump has five days, from Monday, to evaluate and reject or approve the memo’s release.
The House vote came as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made a last-ditch plea for the White House not to release the memo, telling chief of staff John Kelly that it could put classified information at risk, according to The Washington Post.
But the White House has signaled support for the four-page document to be released and is widely expected to defy the Justice Department and make the memo public.
It’s believed the memo holds claims that the FBI did not adequately explain to a clandestine court that some of the information used in the application for the surveillance warrant of former Trump adviser Carter Page is related to a controversial opposition research dossier arranged by former British spy Christopher Steele.
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