The Republican at the center of a controversial memo that President Donald Trump said vindicates him in the Russia investigation plans to publish as many as five similar documents, according to a report.
The memo published last Friday at the behest of Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggests the FBI and Justice Department improperly surveilled a former adviser to the Trump campaign. However, it leaves out facts that “fundamentally impact” its accuracy, the FBI said in a statement last week.
Republicans said Sunday more similar memos are on the way. “There are several areas of concern where federal agencies used government resources to try to create a narrative and influence the election,” a Republican briefed on investigations Nunes has launched told Axios Sunday. “Some have suggested coordination with Hillary Clinton operatives.”
Nunes has reportedly been telling fellow Republicans there could be as many as five more memos showing “wrongdoing” in different government departments, including the Justice and State Departments.
Some Republicans have called for current and former law enforcement officials to be brought up on criminal charges as a result of the first memo. These officials all played roles in the investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign aided those efforts.
Last Friday Trump tweeted the memo shows the “top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.” The president said Saturday that the memo “totally vindicates” him in the Russia investigation probing his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Early last week Nunes told Democrat Rep. Mike Quigley during a House Intelligence Committee meeting that the FBI and Justice Department have “been under investigation by this committee for many, many months for FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] abuse and other matters.”
“We are in the middle of what I call ‘phase two’ of our investigation, which involves other departments,” Nunes told Fox News during an interview last Friday. “Specifically the State Department and some of the involvement they had in this.”
“This completes just the FISA abuse portion of our investigation,” Nunes told Fox.
Democrats argue that the memo is a partisan document because it was drafted and released solely by Republicans on the committee who refused to simultaneously release a Democrat memo based on the same underlying intelligence.
The next round of memos are unlikely to go through the same controversial process of declassifying intelligence Republicans told Axios.
On Sunday some Republicans on the House committee stopped short of agreeing that its contents vindicate Trump.
“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe,” South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, who helped draft the memo, told CBS’S Face the Nation .