White House, FBI, Congress clash over Russia memo

WASHINGTON—The FBI issued a public warning Wednesday against releasing a classified memo on the Russia election hacking investigation, a revelation President Donald Trump has pledged to make. Meanwhile, lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee who voted to release the memo continue to point fingers at each other over partisanship. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said in a short statement Wednesday. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the intelligence committee chairman, countered the FBI’s warning, saying Americans deserve to see the information related to surveillance abuses. Meanwhile, the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, announced late Wednesday the vote to release the memo was no longer valid because Nunes, who wrote the four-page memo, secretly altered the contents before giving it to the White House for review. “The White House has therefore been reviewing a document since Monday night that the committee never approved for public release,” Schiff wrote in a letter. The classified memo details what Republicans say are surveillance abuses by the FBI during the early stages of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections to the Trump campaign. Trump has the final say on whether to make the memo public. He was heard saying Tuesday night after his State of the Union address he would “100 percent” release it.