Ahead of President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the political bitterness between the Republicans and the Democrats has deepened, this time over the FBI’s alleged surveillance abuses.
On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines in favour of making public a classified Republican memo accusing FBI of bias and surveillance abuses — a move that Democrats view as a Republican effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
Republicans, controlling the House and its various committees, voted to release the memo while all Democrats on the House panel voted against it.
The memo, which has been shown to the FBI Director, has been sent to the White House for a review.
If the White House does not raise any objection within five days, the committee can release the memo.
Democratic circles believe President Trump will approve its release.
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told CNN that releasing the memo could “send a message of accountability” in the US intelligence community. “It could shed light on allegations that have existed for a long time,” Shah said, adding Trump hasn’t seen the memo.
Democrats, who have written their own competing memo on the subject, suffered an added setback when the Republicans voted against releasing the Democratic memo simultaneously.
Citing people familiar with the developments, The Washington Post reported the main target of the Republican memo is the FBI’s relationship with British ex-spy Christopher Steele who was hired in 2016 by a Washington research firm to examine any connections between Trump and Russian leaders.
Funded by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, the exercise led to a dossier of allegations against Trump and some of his advisers. Trump has denied all the allegations.
Meanwhile, a dozen Democratic lawmakers have announced that they will boycott Trump’s maiden State of the Union address. They include Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.
The Democrats are raising objections to Trump’s style of functioning, specifically condemning his reported opposition to immigrants coming to the US from some “shithole countries” in Africa.
Jayapal, a first-term congresswoman from Seattle, said she refuses “to dignify a president who has used the platform of the Oval Office to fan the flames of racism, sexism and hatred — most recently with his vulgar condemnation of Haiti and other African countries.”
