Trump is expected to approve the release of the unredacted Nunes memo today

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published 2 February 2018

On Friday, President Trump will sign off on the release of a four-page memo compiled by Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and committee Republicans, led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), will likely make it public sometime during the day, White House officials said Thursday. Trump has read the Nunes memo and is expected to clear it for public consumption without any of the redactions requested by the FBI and other intelligence agencies.

The classified memo, released under a never-before-used House rule, apparently purports to show that the FBI did not indicate in a FISA surveillance warrant that one of its sources, Christopher Steele, was working on a dossier funded indirectly by Hillary Clinton. The FBI has expressed "grave concerns" about the fallout and accuracy of the memo, but despite some concerns at the White House, FBI Director Christopher Wray isn't expected to resign over the memo's release. The FBI Agents Association sided with Wray over Trump on Thursday, and former FBI Director James Comey suggested that Nunes and his allies are "weasels and liars."

Democrats call the memo a misleading and potentially dangerous attempt to discredit the FBI to protect Trump from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and Trump has "told advisers that he thinks the memo is 'gaining traction' and could help him convince the public that the Mueller probe is a witch hunt," The Washington Post reports. A number of people in the White House, meanwhile, fear the memo is a "dud," Axios reports, "and there's internal anxiety about whether it's worth angering the FBI director and intelligence community by releasing this information."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.