US President Donald Trump approved a few minutes ago the publication of a classified Republican memorandum supporting a conspiracy against the President at the FBI and the Department of Justice. An extraordinary showdown with senior law enforcement officials during the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Ignoring the FBI's urges earlier this week, Trump declassified the memo and sent it to Congress. The Republican president told reporters that the content of the document tells a shameful story and that "many people should be ashamed."
The four-page memo was released shortly after by the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee that drafted it.
The document increasingly ignites a battle between Republicans and Democrats over Special Adviser Robert Mueller's criminal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election and any action to prevent the investigation.
Trump has repeatedly complained about Mueller's revelation, which cast a shadow over his first year in office.
The memo was commissioned by the Republican president to the man of the secret services of the House, Devin Nunes. The declassified document is intended to show that the Federal Department of Investigation and Justice deceived a U.S. court in an attempt to extend the electronic surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Two days ago, a public reprimand by the President and Republicans in Congress to the FBI who reported having "serious concerns about factual material omissions" in the document that should not be made public.
The Democrats have described the memo, which was created by the Republican members of the secret service group, as misleading, based on a selective use of highly classified data and intended to discredit Mueller's work.
Russia has denied interference in the election campaign. Trump, calling Mueller's investigation a political witch hunt, has denied collusion or obstruction of justice.
On Friday, Trump accused the country's top police officers of politicizing investigations in favor of Democrats and against his fellow Republicans.
"The best executives and investigators of the FBI and the Department of Justice have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of the Democrats and against the Republicans - something that would have been unthinkable just a short time ago," Trump wrote on Twitter.
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama, said Trump's attack on the FBI and the Justice Department was the "dish he called the black kettle."
Republican efforts to release selective portions of classified information in the memo were a "brazen" political act, Clapper told CNN.
Seeking to defuse the conflict, House of Republican spokesman Paul Ryan supported the release of a Democratic counterpoint memorandum if the Republican document was made public. Ryan can block both, but he supported the release of the Republican memo.
Democrats say their counter-memo restores context and information left out of the Republican version. Republicans resisted the publication of that document,
Ryan's office said today that it supported the Democrats' opposition to not disclose information or information-gathering methods.