Democratic Representative Adam Schiff from California claimed in a letter on Wednesday that Chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes secretly altered the memo alleging corrosive abuse of United States surveillance powers by the Justice Department.
The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee sent a public letter to Nunes, where he accuses him of making “substantive” changes to the confidential document before sharing it with the White House for review and release.
“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,” Schiff tweeted.
Schiff’s letter could delay President Donald Trump’s decision whether to release the document or not
“This evening the Committee Minority discovered that the classified memorandum shared by the Committee Majority with the White House is not, in fact, the same document that Members of the House of Representatives have been reviewing since January 18, 2018 and that the Committee Majority voted on Monday to release to the public, over objections from the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Schiff wrote in the letter.
According to The Hill, Schiff goes on to say that after Democrats found the document “had been secretly altered,” committee Republicans offered them the opportunity to compare the memo sent to the White House with the memo that was made public to all House Members.
According to Schiff, after comparing the two versions “it is clear” that Republicans “made material changes to the version it sent to the White House, which Committee Members were never apprised of, never had the opportunity to review and never approved.”
Jack Langer, Nunes’s spokesman responded to Schiff’s letter saying it’s “strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo.”
“In its increasingly strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo, the Committee Minority is now complaining about minor edits to the memo, including grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves,” Langer said.
“The vote to release the memo was absolutely procedurally sound, and in accordance with House and Committee rules. To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves.”
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