Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday wants the highly classified source materials used by GOP staffers in the House Intelligence Committee to write a memo allegedly outlining surveillance abuses by the Obama administration to other members of the panel.
"You and I have had the opportunity to review many of the documents that the intelligence committee claims are the basis of its memo," Nadler wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Tuesday.
"Those materials tell a very different story than the conspiracy theory concocted by [House Intelligence Committee] Chairman [Devin] Nunes and being repeated by the press," the New York Democrat continued.
Nunes, a Republican from California, has led a GOP effort to pen a four-page memo detailing possible misuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act committed by members of the intelligence community during the Obama presidency.
The document reportedly contains assertions that the FBI used, in part, the "Trump dossier," which contains a number of salacious and unverified claims about associates of President Trump and their ties to Russia, to approve an application to spy on campaign adviser Carter Page.
The report has so far been made available to the entire House, while senators, the Justice Department, and the FBI remain in the dark.
Few lawmakers, however, have been allowed to view the source materials.
As House Republicans push for the memo to be made public, Nadler said it was unfair for Nunes to withhold the document from DOJ and the FBI, particularly when the department and the agency "cannot defend themselves" because of the classified, sensitive nature of the matter.
"The House Committee on the Judiciary must act without delay to correct the record and — in your words — to permit Special Counsel Robert Mueller to complete his investigation 'without interference,'" Nadler wrote, again referring to Goodlatte.
Other Democrats have criticized the memo as GOP "talking points."
