Read the GOP's Rebuttal to the Schiff Memo

On Saturday, House Democrats released the Schiff memo, their rebuttal to the Nunes memo. After the release of the 10-page Democratic memo—written by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and stating that the Nunes memo contains “distortions and misrepresentations”—House Republicans released their own rebuttal.

Titled “The Democrats’ Memo: Charge and Response,” the five-page Republican memo lists 14 charges and 14 responses.

One of the Schiff memo’s charges is about the credibility of Christopher Steele, author of the controversial 35-page “Steele dossier,” which the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee helped fund.

The Democratic charge is that the “[Department of Justice] explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible. (p. 6)”

The Republican’s response to that charge:

FBI’s reliance on Steele’s credibility was badly misplace. Steele violated FBI’s trust by making unauthorized disclosures to the media in October 2016, resulting in his termination as an FBI source.

Moreover, as explained in Senators Graham and Grassley’s declassified criminal referral of Steele, he “told the FBI he had not shared the Carter Page dossier information beyond his client [Glenn Simpson] and FBI,” and DOJ “repeated that claim to the FISC”—four times. In reality, in September 2016—before the initial FISA application—Steele had personally shared dossier information with:

● Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, which published a September 2016 article on Page using Steele’s information (as now publicly confirmed by Isikoff);

● At least four other U.S. media outlets (confirmed in Steele’s May 2017 U.K. court filing, which was made before—but not disclosed in—the June 2017 FISA renewal);

● Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife was employed by Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump (as described in the GOP memo);

● A senior State Department official, Jonathan Winer (publicly confirmed by Winer in a Washington Post op-ed); and

● Perkins Coie, the law firm for DNC and the Clinton campaign (as described in the GOP memo).

Finally, notwithstanding FBI’s confidence in Steele, at the time of the initial FISA application the agency had virtually no visibility into the credibility of Steele’s sub-sources and sub-subsources who originated the dossier’s allegations.

Read the whole Republican rebuttal to the Schiff memo.

Listen to Donald Trump’s reaction to the Schiff memo.