Battle over secret Nunes memo could come to a head next week  Tribune News Service By Kate Irby, David Goldstein and Peter Stone, McClatchy
© Rex Shutterstock/Zuma Press/TNS Devin Nunes listens to testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence related to the Russian cyber attack and investigations into wiretapping, on Capitol Hill in March 2017.

WASHINGTON — That the exact contents of the Nunes memo — a classified document apparently claiming the FBI engaged in "shocking" surveillance abuses have remained officially secret even as it is available to all House members to view is remarkable in Washington.

Its author, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and some of his Republican colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee want to declassify it, and may vote to do so as soon as Monday. The White House says it supports "full transparency." The Justice Department, on the other hand, says that to make it public without its review and possible redactions would be "extraordinarily reckless." And Democrats accuse Nunes of trying to derail special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's influence in the 2016 election and whether it worked with the Trump campaign.

In its opening language, the memo says that its purpose is to brief lawmakers on the findings of the Intelligence Committee's investigation into actions by the Justice Department and the FBI, according to a Democrat familiar with the document; the actions had to do with an application for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in connection with Mueller's investigation.

But, the Democrat said, "there is no investigation" in the usual sense of the word — no fact-finding mission by the full committee, with witnesses and the usual trappings. That alone is a tipoff that the memo's purpose is suspect.But, the Democrat said, "there is no investigation" in the usual sense of the word — no fact-finding mission by the full committee, with witnesses and the usual trappings. That alone is a tipoff that the memo's purpose is suspect.

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