A controversial Republican memo alleging surveillance abuse names FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein along with former FBI Director James Comey, according to The Daily Beast. Capitol Hill sources from both parties say that the memo’s release is “only a matter of time,” but the Justice Department has expressed serious concerns about the memo’s potential release.
According to The Daily Beast, Stephen Boyd, the department’s top congressional liaison, wrote that “it would be extraordinarily reckless for the Committee to disclose such information publicly without giving the Department and the FBI the opportunity to review the memorandum and to advise the HPSCI [the House intelligence committee] of the risk of harm to national security and to ongoing investigations that could come from public release.”
Republicans, including President Trump, have been attacking McCabe and Comey for months, while special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating Trump’s and his team’s connections to the Kremlin. Rosenstein was the one who put that probe in place, and Trump has derided the whole thing as a witch hunt. The memo is written by David Nunes, the California Republican and key Trump ally who chairs the House intelligence committee. Democrats say the memo purposefully misrepresents the procedures it describes, but Republicans say the memo contains disturbing evidence of FBI wrongdoing that should be released.
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