Just after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) anti-FBI memo was released Friday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) said it was “critical” that the focus of the memo’s release remains on “specific actions and specific actors” and not on impugning the “integrity” of the FBI and the Justice Department as a whole.
Ryan said the concerns outlined in the memo, which purports to reveal that FBI officials abused the FISA process when seeking a warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, were “legitimate.”
“Unlike most judicial proceedings, the FISA system depends not on an adversarial process, but instead on the government providing a complete presentation of the facts and circumstances underlying its warrant applications,” he said in a statement. “It is clear from this memo that didn’t happen in this case, and as a consequence an American’s civil liberties may have been violated.”
He called on Democrats to work with Republicans to “ensure the FISA system works as intended” and reiterated his commitment to making sure the Democrats’ counter-memo was released once it “is properly scrubbed of all intelligence sources and methods.”
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted Monday to release the memo, passing the buck to the President to determine whether it should be made public. President Donald Trump declassified the memo Friday afternoon and the memo was released shortly thereafter.
Democrats claim to have a counter-memo that has still not been approved for release.