The intelligence committee of the US House of Representatives on Monday voted along party lines to have a classified memo released. Republicans say that the memo shows bias toward anti-Trump by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Justice seeking permission to carry out an operation for intelligence eavesdropping. The Republican majority in both the House and the Senate approved the release under a rule that had never been invoked before by ignoring a warning issued by the Assistant Attorney General, Stephen Boyd. Mr Boyd warned that it would be incredibly reckless to release the document to the public without a prior security submission review.
The move added oxygen to the bitter bipartisan wrangles over the investigations being conducted by the committees of Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller into allegations that Trump had unique connections to Kremlin during his 2016 presidential campaign. One of the top representatives of the Democratic Party Adam Schiff added that it was a bad day where the panel also voted against the release of a memo by Democrats to counter the report by the conservatives. Schiff rejected calls by the FBI director Christopher Wray for a briefing on the issue.
Schiff added that the committee passed a vote to put their interests and interests of President Trump ahead of national interest. The chairman of the Republican committee, Devine Nunes is the official who commissioned the memo. However, Nunes declined to state to the press when he was asked to give a response to the statement. The Justice Department also did not give a public statement on the issue. Two sources that sought to remain anonymous who are familiar with the memo say that it levels accusations against the Justice Department and the FBI of abusing their authority. The memo says that these two government agencies asked a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge to approve an eavesdropping operation request on Carter Page.
Mr Page served as an advisor to Trump’s Presidential campaign in 2016. The sources said that the memo charges the Justice Department and the FBI with a dossier compiled by Robert S Mueller who was recruited to get adverse reports on trump. According to the sources, the memo indicates that the British spy received financing from the presidential campaign team of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. President trump has on multiple occasions denied any claims of collusion with Russia while at the same time, Kremlin has denied any form of involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign.