With concern at the White House about potential blowback from FBI Director Christopher Wray, the FBI continues to have “grave concerns” over release of a memo from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, a source said Thursday.
“There are still grave concerns about this memo,” an official familiar with the FBI stance told CNN.
The House Intelligence Committee, in a party-line vote on Monday, moved to release the highly controversial memo alleging abuse of surveillance powers by the FBI and put release of the memo in President Donald Trump’s hands.
More about the Nunes memo
The FBI issued a statement warning against releasing the memo as the White House signaled Trump would make it public.
“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said in a statement Wednesday.
California’s Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, said on Wednesday evening that Nunes had altered the memo, and a source said Wray was “raising hell,” but had not threatened to resign.
In light of the allegations about edits and the broader ongoing debate, the official familiar with the FBI’s stance said the bureau’s position remains the same.
“The FBI said in their statement that this memo contained ‘material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,’ ” the official said. “There may be editing of the text of this memo, but that doesn’t change the overall false narrative.”
The official continued, “It sounds like this is spin to justify the release of the memo.”
CNN’s Eli Watkins contributed to this report.