Top Democrat on the House Intel Committee accuses Devin Nunes of altering a controversial GOP memo after Republicans voted to release it

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(L to R) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

• Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has accused his Republican counterpart Devin Nunes of altering a controversial secret GOP memo after Republicans voted to release it, and sending the modified version to the White House for review.
• The memo in question accuses the FBI and Justice Department of improperly surveilling a Trump campaign adviser during the 2016 election, and follows a Republican-led effort to expose anti-Trump bias at the FBI and DOJ.
• The White House had five days to decide whether to publish the memo after the committee voted on Monday to release it.
• Schiff asserted that the modified memo delivered to the White House includes "material changes" other committee members were not informed of, and had no opportunity to approve.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, accused chairman Devin Nunes of modifying a controversial Republican memo that accuses the FBI and Justice Department of improperly surveilling a Trump campaign adviser during the 2016 election.

House Intel Committee Republicans voted on Monday to release that memo, despite Justice Department warnings that such a move would be "extraordinarily reckless" because of questions over its accuracy.

Schiff said in a statement on Wednesday night that Nunes made "material changes" to the version the committee sent to the White House. He asserted that committee members were not made aware of the modifications and had no opportunity to approve them.

"This is deeply troubling because it means the Committee Majority transmitted to the White House an altered version of its classified document that is materially different than the version on which the Committee voted," Schiff's statement read.

The document was delivered to the White House, where President Donald Trump had five days from the date of the vote to decide whether he would publicly release it. He has signaled that he would.

The Republican memo, which Nunes contributed to, claims that top US law-enforcement agencies used the Russia dossier to seek authorization to spy on the Trump campaign adviser Carter Page during the 2016 election. President Donald Trump and his allies have pointed to that as evidence of bias against Trump in the Russia investigation.

Democrats have said the memo contains inaccuracies and aims to misrepresent the facts in the Russia probe. It was not immediately clear whether the changes Nunes allegedly made addressed Democrats' concerns. They have produced their own memo in response to the Republican version.

The FBI on Wednesday also took the unusual step of publicly warning against the memo's release, saying in its own statement: "As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy."

Trump has indicated he would approve the release - notably during a hot-mic moment captured immediately after he delivered his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night.