The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat said Wednesday he’s working with the FBI to try to minimize the number of redactions to the Democratic rebuttal to the GOP’s intelligence memo alleging FBI abuses of its surveillance authority.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor’s breakfast that he said the FBI has flagged everything that wasn’t in the public domain.
“What it appears the FBI did — and I assume this was at the request of the White House — is identify anything in our memo that wasn’t already public,” Schiff said.
Schiff noted that the GOP’s memo, spearheaded by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, was initially classified, too, before the panel’s Republicans voted to declassify it.
“So in our view, even looking at what the FBI has identified as classified, a lot of it is already in the public domain,” Schiff said. “The question is what should we declassify in the public interest? And there, the committee voted unanimously that we ought to declassify this except as to any matters, I think, that go to sources or methods or deep investigative interests.”
Last week, President Donald Trump said he would not be releasing the contents of the Democrats’ memo because it contained “numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.”
Schiff said Wednesday he is in discussions with the FBI to discuss which redactions were needed, and hopes for a resolution soon.
Earlier this month, Trump opted to release the Republican memo, which accuses the FBI of suppressing Democratic ties to an opposition research dossier on then-candidate Trump and Russia used in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
