Nunes Memo ‘Altered’ Before White House Got It, Adam Schiff Says

California Rep. Adam Schiff (D) late Wednesday publicly accused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) of sharing a "secretly altered" version of the Republican-crafted memo with President Donald Trump that alleged the corrosive abuse of the United States surveillance powers by the Justice Department, which the committee had approved for release.

Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, made the claims in a letter to Nunes that he later posted on Twitter, accusing the committee chairman of making "substantive" changes to the confidential memo before sharing it with White House counsel for release. The White House is currently reviewing the four-page classified memo after the committee voted on Monday night and decided to make it public.

Those changes allegedly made by Nunes, Schiff said, were not approved by the full committee according to the protocol.

"Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House, therefore, reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release." Schiff said in the tweet.

Social media users and politicians criticized Nunes after Schiff posted the letter with the claims on Twitter.

A spokesperson for Nunes said that the committee minority is just finding reasons to prevent the memo from being made public. "The vote to release the memo was absolutely procedurally sound, and in accordance with House and Committee rules. To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo," the spokesperson added.

Trump was expected to announce his decision on releasing the classified memo early Friday, however, Schiff's letter could delay the decision.

"This evening the Committee Minority discovered that the classified memorandum shared by the Committee Majority with the White House is not, in fact, the same document that Members of the House of Representatives have been reviewing since January 18, 2018 and that the Committee Majority voted Monday to release to the public, over objections from the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation," the letter from Schiff read.

Schiff also went on to say that after Democrats found that the document "had been secretly altered," committee Republicans reportedly offered them the opportunity to compare the memo, which had been sent to the White House to the memo that was made public to all House Members.

According to Schiff, after comparing the two versions of the memo "it is clear" that Republicans "made material changes to the version it sent to the White House, which Committee Members were never apprised of, never had the opportunity to review and never approved."

Schiff's letter comes after the FBI criticized the memo in a statement earlier Wednesday, saying it has "grave concerns" about the charges made in the memo.

"As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy," the bureau said.

Nunes responded to FBI’s statement Wednesday dismissing their "spurious objections" to the memo.

Committee Republicans led by Nunes had voted Monday to publicly release the memo, following a review by White House counsel. The memo supposedly details alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the U.S. government.

Following this, the document was then turned over to the president, who is responsible for reviewing the document and thus deciding if it is to be released publicly.