FBI has
'grave concerns' about Trump plan to release controversial memo
In statement
attributable to FBI director – appointed by Trump – agency raises concerns
about ‘material omissions of fact’ in document
Tom
McCarthy in New York
@TeeMcSee Email
Wed 31 Jan
2018 20.00 GMT Last modified on Thu 1 Feb 2018 08.31 GMT
The FBI
said on Wednesday it had “grave concerns” about Donald Trump’s apparent intention
to release a memo said to contain classified information about the bureau’s
investigation into one of the president’s campaign aides.
After both
Trump and the House speaker, Paul Ryan, made public statements supporting the
so-called Nunes memo’s release, the fight over its fate took an extraordinary
twist with the FBI’s highly unusual statement, which was ultimately
attributable to the bureau director, Christopher Wray, Trump’s own appointee.
The clash
between Wray and Trump is only the latest flare-up in what officials warn is an
increasingly dangerous showdown between the White House and justice department,
with a cycle of firings and retaliatory leaks potentially culminating in a
spectacular firing or similar move by Trump that could threaten a constitutional
crisis.
“We have
grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the
memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said in its statement.
The memo in
question, which Democrats have said cherry-picks classified material to make
Russia investigators look bad, was assembled by the House intelligence
committee chairman, Devin Nunes, a staunch Trump supporter and a member of his
transition team.
Nunes
issued a combative statement in reply, accusing the FBI of “surveillance
abuses” and dismissing what he called the bureau’s “spurious objections” to the
release of the memo. However, Nunes opposes the release of a parallel memo
written by Democrats.
Though the
Nunes memo’s precise contents are unknown, it is believed to describe a
supposedly flawed request by the FBI to extend surveillance of Carter Page, a
former Trump campaign aide.
The memo is
being treated as potentially explosive in part because it is said to place
responsibility for the supposedly flawed request at the door of the deputy attorney
general, Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation led
by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump used
the mishandling of another FBI investigation as a pretext for firing former
director James Comey in May 2017. The axe fell on Comey after Trump requested a
loyalty pledge from the director which Comey said he declined to give.
Trump made
a similar request of Rosenstein, CNN reported for the first time Wednesday, in
a December meeting in which Trump is said to have asked whether the deputy
attorney general was “on my team”.
“Of course,
we’re all on your team, Mr President,” Rosenstein replied, CNN quoted unnamed
sources as saying.
The
prospective removal of Rosenstein, whom Trump has attacked elsewhere, would
constitute a grave threat to the special counsel investigation of alleged
collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia, analysts have
warned.
Trump
reportedly sought to exact a loyalty pledge from a third top justice department
official, asking former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe whom he voted for in
the presidential election in a meeting following Comey’s firing. McCabe stepped
down in a surprise announcement Monday.
Eric
Holder, the former attorney general, issued a warning about releasing the Nunes
memo on Wednesday. “People must understand what is at stake by release of the
bogus, contrived Nunes memo,” Holder wrote on Twitter. “It uses normally
protected material and puts at risk our intell capabilities in order to derail
a legitimate criminal investigation. This is unheard of - it is dangerous and
it is irresponsible.”
Trump
signaled his intention to release the memo during his departure Tuesday night
from the House chamber, following his first State of the Union address.
Approached
by a representative who urged him: “Mr President, let’s release the memo,”
Trump was heard to reply: “Don’t worry, 100%. Can you imagine?”
Congressional
Republicans have aggressively followed Trump’s lead in attacking the Russia
investigators, briefly floating allegations last week of a “secret society” at
work within the FBI to hobble Trump, before those allegations were retracted.
“Let it all
out, get it all out there, cleanse the organization,” Ryan told colleagues at a
breakfast event Tuesday, referring to the FBI.
That
sentiment was part of a larger effort to discredit the FBI among Republicans,
who cheered the announcement on Monday that McCabe, the deputy FBI director,
would step aside earlier than formerly announced.
The move
was interpreted in some quarters as a power play by Wray, whose interests in
the matter were assumed to be aligned with the president who appointed him.
That
picture was complicated by the release of the FBI statement on Wednesday, and
by reports that Wray had sought to dissuade the White House from releasing the
Nunes memo in a meeting Monday between Rosenstein and the White House chief of
staff, John Kelly.
Republicans
have likewise echoed Trump’s attacks on Mueller, whom Trump ordered fired in
June 2017, according to a New York Times report, only to back down amid
resistance from White House lawyers.
Mueller
reports to Rosenstein, who has testified before Congress that he alone has the
power to fire the special counsel.
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