Fox News’s Napolitano: If Nunes changed memo to satisfy political needs, ‘innocent people will suffer’

Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano said Thursday that “innocent people will suffer” if the substance of the classified GOP memo detailing alleged abuses by the FBI and Justice Department was changed to suit political needs.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) gave President Trump a “secretly altered” version of the memo.

“This is about very serious material, this is about raw intelligence data and interpreting it,” Napolitano said on “Fox & Friends.” “If you’re going to shade the interpretation of raw intelligence data to please political needs, that is very wrong and highly misleading, and innocent people will suffer because of that.”

Trump once called Napolitano a “very talented legal mind” after the former judge claimed on Fox News that President Obama had enlisted a British spy agency to conduct surveillance on Trump.

{mosads}A spokesman for Nunes rebutted Schiff’s accusations, saying that the only changes made to the memo were edits to grammar and two edits requested by the FBI and the panel Democrats.

Trump is currently in the process of reviewing the document and is expected to make a final decision on Friday about whether to release it publicly. The House Intelligence Committee on Monday voted to make the memo public, but opposed releasing a countermemo compiled by panel Democrats.

House GOP lawmakers have pushed for the release of the memo, claiming that it will prove political bias in the FBI, the Justice Department and the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

FBI and Justice Department officials have warned against releasing the memo. The FBI on Wednesday released a statement noting it has “grave concerns” about material omitted from the memo.