By Chris Megerian and Joseph Tanfani

Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House Intelligence Committee Saturday released a Democratic memo countering a harsh Republican critique of the FBI and Justice Department, escalating the partisan battle over government surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser that began three weeks before the 2016 election.

The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, has said the rebuttal was needed to correct the “many distortions and inaccuracies” in a Republican memo released on Feb. 2.

President Donald Trump quickly agreed to declassify the Republican memo, but he initially blocked the Democratic version by saying its contents were too sensitive. Democrats negotiated with law enforcement officials to redact some details, eventually securing its release weeks after the Republican document had roiled politics and dominated headlines.

The Democratic memo says the FBI and Justice Department acted properly when they sought a secret warrant to eavesdrop on Carter Page, an energy consultant whose contacts with Russian authorities had drawn FBI scrutiny for years.

The opposing conclusions deepen the bitter divide on the Intelligence Committee and within Congress in general over how to view the FBI’s investigation of Page — and, by extension, the broader investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump or his aides assisted Russian meddling in the campaign or obstructed justice in the White House.

After submitting a lengthy classified application to a special court, the FBI and Justice Department were granted a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to conduct surveillance against Page starting Oct. 21, 2016.

The approval signified that the court agreed there was probable cause to believe Page could be a Russian agent. He already had left his job as an unpaid foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign.

The initial 90-day warrant was renewed three times by three different judges, each time after new applications were reviewed and signed by officials at the FBI and Justice Department.

Page was never charged with a crime, and has claimed he was the victim of FBI overreach as part of a politically inspired effort to defeat Trump or undermine his presidency. The FBI, in turn, denies wrongdoing.

The Republican memo was championed Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House committee. It said the four FISA court applications were flawed because they relied heavily on intelligence gathered by Christopher Steele, a former British spy then working for an opposition research group under contract to lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The Republican memo says FBI and Justice Department officials held back information about Steele’s Democratic connections, and did not reveal Steele’s personal loathing of Trump.

But the Democrats’ memo contests the assertion that the FISA warrant depended largely on Steele’s partly unverified information, which later was leaked. It also says the application did indicate that Steele had political motivations, even though it didn’t explicitly say he was working on behalf of another political party.

Steele, who had focused on Russia as a British intelligence operative, was an FBI source long before the campaign. His relationship with the bureau later was terminated after he disclosed some of his material to several U.S. news organizations.

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The memos have become the battleground for an extraordinary confrontation between Trump and the top officials he appointed to lead the FBI and Justice Department. Just before the Republican memo’s release, the FBI released a rare statement saying it had “grave concerns” about its accuracy.

Some Republican leaders were careful to say the Republican allegations were not aimed at undermining the Mueller investigation. Trump had no such reluctance, posting on Twitter that the Republican memo “totally vindicates” him and denouncing “little Adam Schiff” as “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington.”

The Democratic rebuttal won’t be the last word in the controversy. Nunes has said he plans to release more memos on other aspects of the investigation. He said the State Department was one area he was examining.

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PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): Carter Page