The memo, written by Republicans, is said to accuse investigators of abusing their authorities in spying on a former Trump campaign aide. The White House is considering whether to release it.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department and the F. B. I. were bracing on Tuesday for the release of a secret memo that Republicans say shows the agencies abused their authorities to obtain a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser.
The White House received a copy of the memo on Monday night after Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to make the information public. Top lawyers at the White House have reviewed the memo — a three-and-a-half-page document that Democrats contend is misleading.
President Trump, who spent Tuesday preparing for his first State of the Union address, was eager to release the memo, but the White House has not said when that might happen.
“There are no current plans to release the House Intelligence Committee’s memo,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday night. “The president has not seen or been briefed on the memo or reviewed its contents.”
Christopher A. Wray, the F. B. I. director, and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein went to the White House on Monday in the hopes of getting West Wing aides to in turn persuade Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to delay the vote that night, according to a current administration official and a former one who were familiar with the events. Mr. Wray and Mr. Rosenstein spoke with John F. Kelly, the president’s chief of staff, but were unsuccessful.
Even without having seen it, Mr. Trump, whose preferred cable channel, Fox News, has focused on the memo extensively, has told people close to him that he feels strongly that the memo makes the case that F. B. I. and Justice Department officials acted inappropriately when they sought the highly classified warrant in October 2016 on the campaign adviser, Carter Page.
The memo, drafted by Republicans on the Intelligence Committee staff, is said to contend that officials from the two agencies were not forthcoming to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge in seeking the warrant. Republicans accuse the agencies of failing to properly disclose that Democrats financed research used in the application for the warrant, people familiar with the memo said. The research was assembled by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, who produced a dossier of unsubstantiated allegations about Mr. Trump.
The memo is also said to highlight the role of Mr. Rosenstein, who authorized the renewal of the surveillance of Mr. Page in the spring of 2017. And people who have read the memo say it mentions Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy director of the F. B. I., who has been a frequent target of the president and Republicans in Congress. Mr. McCabe stepped down on Monday, telling people close to him that he felt pressured to because of a separate Justice Department inspector general investigation.
The Justice Department said in a letter last week that it knew of no wrongdoing related to the FISA process, and department officials believe the Republican memo leaves out key facts about the case — an argument also made by Democrats.
Mr. Trump has up to five days to decide whether to block the release for national security reasons. His aide Kellyanne Conway said on Tuesday that the White House took the possibility of disclosing the memo seriously.
Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency were similarly concerned about the push to release the memo. While those intelligence officials see the current dispute as the F. B. I. and Justice Department’s fight, they fear the precedent that would be set if sensitive information on sources or methods were to be released as part of a partisan political brawl.
Both agencies also contributed intelligence that was used in the Trump investigation. The agencies have concerns that, should House Republicans prevail in their push to release the memo, they would be tempted to continue to selectively release sensitive intelligence when it suited their political needs — and that next time, it could put C. I. A. or N. S. A. intelligence at risk of being revealed.
On Capitol Hill, House members began reviewing a separate document drafted by Democrats. People familiar with that memo said it was a 10-page point-by-point rebuttal of the Republican document, including dozens of footnotes. Democrats had hoped to release their rebuttal publicly as well, but a motion to do so was voted down on Monday.
Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who has backed the memo’s release, tried to tamp down expectations about its contents on Tuesday. In a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, Mr. Ryan “implored” his fellow lawmakers not to overstate the facts of the memo and urged them not to tie the contentious document to the work of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to a person in the room.
