The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday night to release a classified memo written by Rep. Devin Nunes that alleges abuses by the FBI. The memo will now head to the President, who has five days to decide whether or not to release the memo to the public.
The memo alleges that the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance law when it used the Democrat-funded Russian dossier to reportedly go after President Donald Trump and his administration.
The dossier research was used by the FBI to get a warrant for Carter Page, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, CNN reported.
“It cites the role of deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and outgoing deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe for their roles in overseeing aspects of the investigation, according to a source briefed on the matter,” CNN reported.
Recently, the FBI’s top agents have come under great scrutiny, as Republican lawmakers continued to call for the release of the memo that is said to reveal an extreme bias against the Trump Administration.
And on Monday, the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, resigned from his post effective immediately. McCabe had served at the FBI for more than 20 years, since 1996. He was expected to retire this year, as he will be up for full retirement benefits mid-March.
The timing of McCabe’s departure is peculiar, as FBI Director Christopher Wray reportedly saw the Nunes memo a day earlier.
There is no ignoring the now-infamous memo written by House Intelligence Committee Republicans that purportedly reveals a shocking high-level conspiracy. Politicians are demanding it be released to the public, but the FBI and the Justice Department are much more hesitant, especially in light of the recent text message incident, where thousands of messages between FBI officials apparently went missing.
The memo and text messages are said to reveal conspiracy among some of the highest echelons of government, involving the FBI plotting to spy on and upend President Donald Trump and his administration.
While Democrats are now saying the “#ReleaseTheMemo” movement is merely a distraction from the current federal investigation into Russian interference in the Presidential election – and have written a memo of their own, Republican politicians have been front and center pushing for the memo to be published.
Notably, the Intel Committee voted against releasing the Democrats’ memo.
The President now has five days to decide whether the memo will be released to the public.
The vote comes in accordance with what CNN described as an “obscure committee rule,” one that hasn’t been referenced in more than 40 years.
