WASHINGTON -- Citing national security concerns, the White House on Friday formally notified the House Intelligence Committee that President Donald Trump is "unable" to declassify a memo drafted by Democrats that counters GOP allegations about abuse of government surveillance powers in the FBI's Russia probe.
White House counsel Don McGahn said in a letter to the committee that the memo contains "numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages" and asked the Democrats to revise the memo with the help of the Justice Department. He said Trump is still "inclined" to release the memo in the interest of transparency if revisions are made.
The president's rejection of the Democratic memo is in contrast to his enthusiastic embrace of releasing the Republican document, which he pledged before reading to make public. The president declassified the document last week, allowing its publication in full.
The president has said the GOP memo "vindicates" him in the ongoing Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. But congressional Democrats and Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who helped draft the GOP memo, have said it shouldn't be used to undermine the special counsel.
[DOCUMENT: Read the full Republican memo]
The top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, criticized Trump for treating the two documents differently, saying the president is now seeking revisions by the same committee that produced the original Republican memo. Still, Schiff said, Democrats "look forward to conferring with the agencies to determine how we can properly inform the American people about the misleading attack on law enforcement by the GOP."
Schiff wrote the memo countering the Republican version, which was commissioned by Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was less measured than Schiff, saying the White House move is "part of a dangerous and desperate pattern of cover-up on the part of the president." California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and has read the classified information on which both memos are based, tweeted that Trump's blocking the memo is "hypocrisy at its worst."
Nunes, however, encouraged Democrats to accept the Justice Department's recommendations and "make the appropriate technical changes and redactions."
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Earlier, White House spokesman Raj Shah said Trump had discussed the Democratic document with the White House counsel's office, FBI Director Christopher Wray and another top Justice Department official. The president had until today to decide whether to allow the classified material to become public after the House intelligence panel voted Monday to release it.
In declining to declassify the document, the White House also sent lawmakers a letter signed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Wray, as well as a marked-up copy of the memo, laying out parts it considers too sensitive to make public. Among those passages are some that the Justice Department says could compromise intelligence sources and methods, ongoing investigations, and national security if disclosed.
Trump's decision came hours after he suggested to reporters in the Oval Office during an unplanned public event that he would be clearing the document for release, saying, "It's going to be released soon. We're going to be releasing a letter soon."
A White House official Friday afternoon told reporters that Trump's reference to a "letter" was just him being loose with nomenclature. At the time, she gave no indication that he might block release of the document.
BATTLE OF THE MEMOS
The Intelligence Committee Democrats behind their memo say it disputes many claims in the GOP memo, which accused the FBI and Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers in obtaining a secret warrant to monitor former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
The memo's release would have capped off a week in which Republicans and Democrats on the committee have publicly fought, with the panel now erecting a wall to separate feuding Republican and Democratic staff members who had long sat side by side.
The disagreements have escalated over the past year as Democrats have claimed that Republicans aren't taking the panel's investigation into Russian election meddling seriously enough. They say the GOP memo is designed as a distraction from the probe, which is looking into whether Trump's campaign was in any way connected to the Russian interference.
Trump declassified the GOP-written memo over the objections of the FBI, which said it had "grave concerns" about the document's accuracy.
In the Nunes memo, Republicans took aim at the FBI and the Justice Department over the use of information from former British spy Christopher Steele in obtaining a warrant to monitor Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The main allegation was that the FBI and Justice Department didn't tell the court enough about Steele's anti-Trump bias or that his work was funded in part by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
They argued that the reliance on Steele's material amounted to an improper politicization of the government's surveillance powers.
Democrats have countered that the GOP memo was inaccurate and a misleading collection of "cherry-picked" details.
They said that federal law enforcement officials had informed the court about the political origins of Steele's work and that some of the former spy's information was corroborated by the FBI. They also noted that there was other evidence presented to the court besides Steele's information, though they have not provided details.
The Democratic memo is expected to elaborate on these points.
House Republicans who have seen the document had said portions will almost certainly have to be redacted to protect intelligence sources and methods. Earlier this week, White House officials said the Democratic memo would go through the same national security and legal review as the Republican document. But White House Chief of Staff John Kelly hinted at possible redactions, saying the Democratic version is "not as clean" as the GOP's.
Schiff has said he will be scrutinizing the process closely.
CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
After circulating their concerns about the information compiled by Steele, some Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are pushing for a prohibition on the use of politically funded information in applications for surveillance warrants.
The proposal, which earned swift push-back from Democrats, was made during a private meeting of the House Intelligence Committee held Monday, according to a newly released transcript of the session.
The dispute highlights the extent to which the so-called Steele dossier alleging Trump has personal and financial ties to Russian officials has divided the committee, as the parties quarrel over how congressional panels and federal law enforcement agencies have handled their respective investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.
The transcript from the Monday meeting appears to corroborate claims that the Democrats' memo contains far more classified information than the Republicans' memo did, including references to the locations of meetings outside the United States; the FBI's ability to sweep up the communications of targets; and other sources and methods lawmakers expect will be redacted before the memo is approved for public release. Republicans have chastised the Democrats for putting so much classified information in their document.
Democrats have said they have no intention of releasing any part of the document the FBI and Justice Department does not approve. The classified information in the Democratic memo provides necessary context "to rebut the errors, omissions, and distortions in the Republican-drafted memo," according to Schiff.
Scrutiny of the dossier has pitted the parties against each other across the Capitol as well. On Friday, Feinstein released a robust defense of Steele, who alerted the FBI to his findings before the election.
The California Democrat's memo was intended to rebut a criminal referral recently delivered to the Department of Justice by two of her Republican colleagues, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa and panel member Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
House Republicans have pointed to the specifics of Grassley and Graham's memo as corroboration of the complaints they made in their memo. Feinstein also accuses Grassley and Graham of omitting key facts about Steele's interactions with the FBI.
A spokesman for Grassley said Feinstein's analysis "smacks of desperation" and was "grasping at straws to mischaracterize the stated intent and substance" of his letter.
In the meantime, many Republicans are speculating that Nunes' embrace of a politically one-sided memo to release classified information -- a previously unexploited tactic -- may have been the death knell for bipartisanship on a committee that has been politically fractured since its probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections began.
"I said from the beginning that neither of these memos should have been written," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., a moderate Republican who is retiring at the end of his term. "I'm all for transparency, but this whole exercise is transparently partisan."
Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day, Mary Clare Jalonick and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press; by Billy House and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News; by John T. Bennett of CQ-Roll Call; and by Karoun Demirjian and Rosalind S. Helderman of The Washington Post.
A Section on 02/10/2018