Democrats press for a Monday vote to release their anti-Nunes memo

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

last updated 5 February 2018

A week after Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release the classified memo compiled for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and not release the classified rebuttal written for the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Schiff is pushing for a do-over on Monday evening. The four-page Nunes memo purports to show that the FBI improperly omitted the political origins of a dossier used to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, while the 10-page Schiff memo reportedly shoots those assertions down. While Democrats are still pushing back against the Nunes memo, Nunes says he has other memos in the works.

Even though Republicans blocked the Schiff memo last week, some of those same Republicans, plus House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), have suggested they now favor releasing the memo, so long as sensitive national security information is redacted. If the House Intelligence Committee does approve the memo's release, President Trump has five days to object — he signed off on releasing the Nunes memo unredacted on Friday — and if he does, the full House could overrule him.

Trump has trumpeted the Nunes memo as a document that "totally vindicates" him in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russian election-meddling investigation, an assertion dismissed Sunday by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as almost all intelligence experts. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned Trump in a letter that "a refusal to release the Schiff memo ... will confirm the American people's worst fears that the release of Chairman Nunes' memo was only intended to undermine Special Counsel Bob Mueller's investigation."

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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.