What Is ‘The Memo,’ and Why Is Washington Abuzz?

U.S. politics are in turmoil over “the memo,” a document few have read. Supporters of President Donald Trump say its contents raise questions about the integrity of the criminal investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 election, which has blossomed into a broader inquiry of Trump and his inner circle. Trump’s critics say the memo is a politically driven effort to undercut the Russia probe. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says the document shouldn’t be released to the public. But it probably will be.

It’s a four-page summary of classified information prepared by a Republican congressman, Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a stalwart defender of Trump. The memo has been described as laying out the case that officials at the FBI and the Justice Department showed a bias against Trump by misleading a surveillance court, in October 2016, to obtain a warrant to spy on an associate of the Trump campaign, Carter Page. The FBI’s interest in Page, who had visited Moscow in July 2016, was one of the threads that led to the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to oversee an investigation of the campaign’s ties to Russia.