WASHINGTON — President Trump is expected to approve the release of a controversial congressional memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI, after the White House agreed to some redactions, and the document is likely to be made public Friday by House Republicans, according to senior administration officials. The public release of the classified document, through a never-before-used committee rule, threatens to further fracture the frayed relationship between the President and his Justice Department and intelligence community, both of which opposed the release of the document, which is based on classified intelligence. "President Trump has approved the declassification of the document in full, and it has been transmitted to the minority and majority of the House Intel Committee," Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said, adding that the White House did not request any redactions to the memo. On Wednesday, the FBI issued a rare, unsigned statement citing its concerns with the accuracy of the memo, but officials there do not think its disclosure will lead to a direct confrontation between Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray, according to current and former law enforcement officials. The role of the House Intelligence Committee, under California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, apparently working hand in glove with the White House against the FBI and the Justice Department, raises serious questions, meanwhile, about the constitutional separation of powers and the role of the panel in conducting oversight of intelligence operations. “Not impartial legal analysis.”

The four-page memo alleges that the FBI and Department of Justice improperly relied on the salacious dossier complied by former British spy Christopher Steele to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Carter Page — an aide to the Trump campaign who admitted he met with Kremlin officials in 2016. She added that Nunes’ actions “make him unfit to serve as chairman.”

House republicans are trying to “sow conspiracy theories and attack the integrity and credibility of federal law enforcement as a means to protect President Trump and undermine the work of Special Counsel Mueller,” Schumer wrote to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). “They need to pay careful attention to what our folks who protect us have to say about how this bears on our national security.”

Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump, tweeted Thursday evening about the FBI statement: “All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. Only then can anyone rationally decide whether the supposed additional information would have been meaningful or necessary.”

Democrats have sought to release a “response memorandum,” but House Republicans have blocked them in what Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said in a statement Friday afternoon is a “transparent effort to suppress the full truth.”

“The Republican document mischaracterizes highly sensitive classified information that few members of Congress have seen, and which Chairman Nunes himself chose not to review,” the statement said.
The document is released through the House Intelligence Committee's website. Opinions on the memo were largely mixed, with Democrats, some Republicans and several national security experts suggesting that certain details in the document confirm prior reports surrounding the reasoning for the FBI's decision to conduct the investigation. Critics of the memo suggested that its release was a partisan attempt to undermine and discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible ties between Trump's presidential campaign and Russian intelligence associates, and posed a risk to national security .